Welcome to Emo’s World on SOA. I’ve been on a professional journey for the last eight years with SOA, and some would argue even before that time while working on technologies such as CORBA and DCE (does anyone remember the Distributed Computing Environment?) .

Through the years, I’ve been getting my hands dirty with SOA from the chaotic “new economy” days of early 2000 while attempting to build innovative ASP (another legacy buzzword—Application Service Provider) solutions through harnessing Web Services (can we say point-to-point?), to attempting to creating a more agile IT infrastructure for SOA by leveraging the concept of an intermediary, getting on the “bus” to implement SOA if you will. During the last few years, I’ve seen first-hand the short-term benefits of investing in infrastructure but also the sticky longer-term challenges – where projects get stalled or fail due to a singular focus on the foundation without the planning and investing in the governance processes, operational management and other key success factors to realize a true working SOA that delivers rewards to the business.

After working with a wide array of customers and partners in this space over the last several years, I plan to share real-world examples and anecdotes of best practices for taking the next steps to SOA success, not just through infrastructure but true SOA deployment and operations with tangible value.

Through my blog, I’ll be taking you on a journey to explore and debate what capabilities and best practices are needed to realize measurable business value from SOA efforts while leveraging investments in SOA enablement such as integration suites, application servers and ESBs. I also plan to tackle some controversial subjects such as “an ESB does not a SOA make” or “When is an org not ready for SOA?” Come along, it will be an interesting ride…