Service Oriented Archiecture (SOA) helps create greater alignment between IT and line of business while generating more flexibility - IT flexibility to support greater business flexibility. Your business processes are changing faster and faster and global competition requires the flexibility that SOA can provide. SOA can help you get better reuse out of your existing IT investments as well as the new services you're developing today. SOA makes integration of your IT investments easier by making use of well-defined interfaces between services. SOA also provides an architectural model for integrating business partners', customers' and suppliers' services into an enterprise's business processes. This reduces cost and improves customer satisfaction. Finally, SOA reduces business risk and exposure by helping you comply with legislation and regulations, such as (in the United States) Sarbanes-Oxley, the US Patriot Act, etc.

SOA views everything as a 'service' that is packaged to be flexible and reusable by being abstracted from underlying technology changes. Services can range from component pieces of code at the programming model level, applications that need to be integrated or to business processes that can orchestrate your assets for competitive advantage.

There are many ways to get started with SOA, with the IBM SOA Foundation - an integrated, open-standards-based set of software, best practices and patterns for Service Oriented Architecture. IBM SOA Foundation helps to extend the value of the applications and business processes that currently run your business, not replace them. IBM SOA Foundation is interoperable and fully modular - allowing you to select components on a build-as-you-go basis by adding components as new requirements need to be addressed. And because IBM SOA Foundation is scalable, you can start small and grow as fast as the business requires. IBM SOA Foundation also provides extensive support for business and IT standards to facilitate greater interoperability and portability between applications.