Software systems are supposed to make a company's operation simple and easy. However, most of them are not as simple as we expect and some are too complex and need to be run by professionals at high cost.

For example, a small company to sell automobile parts needs to run a software for taking care of orders and sales, to put information on its web page and to upgrade its software.

Although the software saves much human works, yet the company still needs to hire at least two professionals to maintain the network.

If there's an automatic framework through web service to meet the demand with the speed and at a very low cost, will the company take it instead of hiring professionals?

A reasonable answer will be: Yes.

It seems to be a dream far away.

However, experts from IBM told their audience at a recent seminar that the service oriented architecture (SOA) they promoted may make the dream come true.

According to Eric Peng Ye, senior software engineer of IBM, SOA is an IT architectural style whose goal is to achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents. It is a unit of work done by a service provider to achieve desired end results for a service consumer.

He explained that the concept is like to shop in a super market.

"Being a customer, people don't need to worry about the production and transportation procedure of the products, and they just need to take what they need," he said.

SOA represents the promise of integrating diverse services and applications so they can share information and communicate with each other, thus reduce unnecessary human work in between and to provide the service the customers need as automatically as possible.

It is said businesses, no matter small or large, can benefit from the technology because it can make operations more efficient and provide greater flexibility to respond to market demands.

IBM declared that the Business Integration Adoption Model unveiled at the seminar is designed to accelerate the business benefits from SOA and establish a road map for increasing business value for customers.

Ernest Lee, IBM WebSphere Brand Executive for Greater China, told Xinhua that more and more Chinese companies have realized the benefits of SOA and are interested in adopting the technology in their businesses. About 40 customers took part in the seminar to learn more about SOA.

However, he admitted that 2004 and 2005 are sill the educating years for the market, more and more Chinese companies gradually learn there is a technology called SOA and it may help them to solve the problems they meet.

Many big names, such as IBM, Microsoft and BEA are ready to scramble the market, yet they need to let their customers know how SOA can bring in profits before they can expect a big harvest in the market.

IT analysts predict that in 2007, around 70 percent companies will turn to SOA and plan to establish IT system. The market of SOA will be valued at 21 billion US dollars in 2008.

Source: Xinhua