SOA is the most important initiative facing IT today and is difficult to grasp. This book demystifies the complex topic of SOA and makes it accessible to all those people who hear the term but aren't really sure what it means. This team of well-respected authors explains that SOA is a collection of applications that enables resources to be available to other participants in a network using any service-based technology. It examines how SOA enables faster and cheaper application development and how it offers reusable code that can be used across various applications. It covers what SOA is, why it matters, how it can impact businesses, and how to take steps to implement SOA in a corporate environment.