Main Characteristics of Companies Using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and of Their Operation Context

Abstract

The aim of this article is to establish the main characteristics of the organizations that have successfully implemented information systems based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Their environmental circumstances have also been studied. To achieve this objective, a SOA bibliographic review has been carried out, encompassing an analysis of 25 real cases in which different SOA applications were successfully implemented. All these cases were published between 2.001 and 2.007. The conclusions of this article can be briefly summarized as follows: SOA is well suited for organizations that rely on important legacy systems, whose performance is hindered by the lack of integration and flexibility of their computer architectures. These organizations therefore need to improve such architectures rather than replace them by new systems; SOA is being used by organizations that need to integrate their systems with those of their supply chain partners; SOA solutions provide support for the use of Web technologies.