http://www.soamag.com The SOA Magazine is a monthly online publication provided by SOA Systems Inc. and Prentice Hall/PearsonPTR and is officially associated with the "Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl." SOA en-us Copyright 2009, SOA Systems Inc. http://soamag.com/I26/0223-2.asp The concept of virtualization and sharing of resources is not new. In fact, the idea of standardization has been around since the industrial revolution made it possible to mass produce identical parts. Because of this, manufacturing and production costs declined steeply, as businesses no longer needed to specialize in every aspect of production. And now, the same idea is being applied in the information age. Virtualization and service-orientation are allowing businesses to share or sell common components to allow for faster and cheaper development times. SOA http://www.soamag.com/contributors/bio-ecastro.asp#When:22.02.09 http://www.soamag.com/I22/0908-2.asp One of the primary goals of service-orientation is to attain a structural cost reduction in the delivery of IT services through reuse and standardization. The transition from a traditional system to a service-oriented system requires breaking monolithic applications into standard services. In keeping with this approach, many services can become outsourced, which in turn may lead to lower operating costs but at the expense of downsizing. In this article we will explore structural economic changes brought upon by service-orientation and we will highlight how the emerging services marketplace will make SOA in general more accessible to small-to-medium sized organizations. SOA http://www.soamag.com/contributors/bio-ecastro.asp#When:22.09.08