Just what the heck is a service-oriented architecture anyway? One of the biggest IT buzzwords today, SOA nonetheless suffers from a lack of formal definition. Advocates tend to extoll SOAs benefits without actually explaining what it is, or how an agency could go about procuring one. To get some clarity, we consulted with Bob Schumm, di- rector of Federal Business Development for BEA Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif.
Perhaps best known for its WebLogic application server software, BEA has been a strong champion for organizational use of SOA. Earlier this summer, the company released its AquaLogic suite of software products, which is specifically designed to help large organizations create an SOA framework. The suite includes an enterprise service bus, a data services platform, a services registry and an enterprise security toolkit.