A grand tour of service architectures uncovers startlingly diverse approaches This is the second issue of InfoWorld in a matter of months with an SOA (service-oriented architecture) cover story. I’ll have to take at least some of the blame for that. I’ve been covering SOA since it first gained traction several years ago, and it’s clear to me that unlike other trends that quickly fade into history, SOA keeps getting more relevant as time wears on.“Building SOA your way,” penned by our Test Center Lead Analyst Jon Udell, delves deeper into SOA implementations than InfoWorld has ever gone before. Jon brings unique insight to his interviews with the enterprise SOA architects in finance, health care, and other verticals. Read this story, and you get a tangible sense of how IT leaders are groping their way toward the right mix of platforms, protocols, and service management infrastructure to support the business agility promise made by SOA.What these businesses have in common is the need to change business processes on the fly to respond to the shifting demands of the marketplace. Old-fashioned, monolithic applications freeze business processes in place; what’s required instead is an array of services that can be recombined and respond to changing needs quickly. Publishing those services and providing a coherent framework within which they can be managed, combined, and recombined into applications is what SOA is all about. Most SOA initiatives are at an early phase, but the promise of increased agility is real. This November, our SOA Executive Forum in New York (the third in a series of InfoWorld SOA events) will provide more resources from the people on the front lines of SOA planning, development, and deployment. Andrew Brown, CTO of Merrill Lynch and one who has many interesting SOA tales to tell, will be the keynote speaker at the event. Hope to see you there! Technology IndustrySoftware Development