Integrating business processes, applications, databases, and systems is a problem that has plagued IT organizations for decades. The Service-Oriented Architecture or SOA, which employs web-based technologies, is the industry’s latest attempt to solve the integration problem. Many firms have floundered with implementing SOA which encompasses a complex set of technologies. This has led some industry analysts to send out the word that “SOA is dead”. We use the methodology of real options to establish a value for SOA. We conclude that SOA is not dead and is indeed a technology bet that most organizations would find worth making.
