SOA has moved beyond a technology initiative. It is fundamentally about creating an alignment between business and IT -- about driving IT design and deployment decisions from a clear understanding of the business design being automated by IT. Doing so creates an economic context in which to measure the value of trade-offs in IT design. By recognizing the basic constructs of business design, we can identify critical elements of our information systems, and how information technology contributes to enabling business goals and priorities. IT innovation is at its best when it adds value to those that use or depend on it. All of this calls for a framework in which to structure SOA based applications -- an open and consistent set of principles in which we can meaningfully innovate. We refer to this framework as an SOA Foundation -- identifying the key components, relationships, programming models and infrastructure that enable SOA-based enteprise architectures. In this presentation we will describe the SOA Foundation, motivations for standardizing the key elements of that framework, and some of the strategic business and technology issues that will evolve within that framework.

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Speaker Bio: Rob High is the chief architect for the SOA Foundation, an IBM Distinguished Engineer, and member of the IBM Academy of Technology. He is responsible for ensuring an open industry architectural definition of the principles of business and IT alignment enabled by SOA, as well as ensuring IBM's software and services portfolio is architecturally grounded to enable for efficient SOA-based solutions. This responsibility extends across the IBM software portfolio, including WebSphere, Rational, Tivoli, Lotus,and Information Management products relevant to enabling SOA. Rob has 29 years of programming experience and has worked with distributed, object-oriented, component-based transaction monitors for the last 14 years, including SOMObject Server, Component Broker, and most recently the WebSphere Application Server. Prior to his current responsibility, Rob was the chief architect for the WebSphere foundation with architectural responsibility for the WebSphere Application Server and the related products integrated on that core runtime.