Special report: As big companies adopt SOA, the model is changing the way they plan, develop and deploy enterprise applications. Take Comcast and United Airlines as examples among the five case studies that are showing how “SOA now offers the possibility of greater alignment between IT and business than ever before,” Galen Gruman writes. And a key piece of some service-oriented architectures is an ESB, otherwise known as the enterprise service bus. James Borck reviews two such offerings from Progress Sonic and Cape Clear. “These suites have come a long way since my previous encounter with the Version 6 releases (and five other commercial ESB solutions), and I was immediately impressed by the level of maturity and development delivered by both vendors.” Related: InfoClipz on SOA governance. Best of the blogs: Now that Google has unveiled it’s mobile platform, Allen Fear is asking Will Android kill the iPhone? “All signs seem to indicate that Google intends to work outside the walled garden that cellcos have used to decide what they will and will not permit on the handset,” he points out. “I for one would spend a lot less time in front of my computer if I had a 3G phone (preferably WiMAX) with ubiquitous and unrestricted access to the internet, a reasonable amount of storage, a basic set of productivity apps, and freedom of choice about the software I installed on the device.” Careers: A reader writes in to ask does variable compensation work for IT professionals? “Pay-for-performance entails risk as well as reward,” Bob Lewis asserts. “Tech staff tend to be more motivated by a sense of achievement. Explaining the comp program in engineering terms is a more sensible choice for them.” Alas, it’s not quite that simple, but getting to the right question makes it all pretty clear. Technology Industry