Today, service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are being heralded by industry analysts and software vendors as the only viable way to overcome the complexities involved in creating agile business systems. These software structures offer great promise for accelerating deployment of new applications and capabilities, streamlining business-critical processes, reducing costs, and enabling organizations to increase their return on investment from an accumulation of diverse systems and communication technologies.

This paper will examine the basic premises underlying SOAs and describe how universal technology and service adapters, such as those from iWay software, can help organizations realize the benefits of SOAs.