Will SOA help or hinder the alignment of business and IT?

Theoretically, a company's business culture can benefit from absorbing the principles of SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture), a conceptual approach to computing, people and processes. Whether it will succeed, however, depends in large part on corporate culture and the type of management structure already in place. For example, SOA might be particularly useful in a tightly organized and centralized corporate environment, since it can promote more unified IT methods, with high reuse and standardized ways to assemble and provide services. Decentralized organizations that value innovation also can benefit from SOA. Core services can be made available to units, or each unit can acquire and create processes geared toward their specific needs. The best way to ensure success of SOA in the enterprise is for companies to understand their own cultures.

Learn more about whether your company will succeed with SOA:
- read the article at RedmondDeveloper

Related articles on SOA:
- for the basics on SOA, read this
- for more on whether SOA will work in your environment, read this
- for the four stages of successful SOA, read this
- for a case study on SOA, read this
- for information on using SOA to boost e-commerce efforts, read this