The Promise and Limitations of Service Oriented Architecture

In today's markets, business enterprises are required to deliver improved functionality and provide on-demand services, while leveraging existing IT infrastructure and investment. They are expected to be agile and dynamic. It is the globalization, tighter economies, business process outsourcing and ever increasing regulatory environments that are forcing businesses to transform the way they provide their business and services. In this paper, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is proving to be an attractive approach that promises better alignment of IT with business vision, more effective reuse and better interoperability, reduced costs of development and more efficient operation of business applications. However, like any other approach, it has its limitations and inherent issues.