How do you start SOA

This is post is linked to a Zapthink arcticle.

A very Valid point is - you cannot buy SOA, but you can buy tools which enable SOA and help you setup a framework based on which you develop and deploy services.

Most import thing is - you need to give back the business people a working model faster so that they have confidence in it and keep the SOA-izing the Enterprise applicaion Alive.

A good first step is to take an inventory of proprietary middleware and application interfaces and replace them with standards-based systems and APIs. The goals are to eliminate the application-integration nightmare that currently haunts a majority of IT shops and to remove redundant components. Adapting the interfaces, either with Web services or other standards, will speed the process of making application components work together. And don't discount legacy systems

"If you can prove you can make SOA happen on legacy apps, you will have an easier time proving it for new ones," Schmelzer says.

In SOA, we no longer think of building monolithic applications and integrating them. We think about building services and composing them.