Web Services are a reality in today’s enterprise, but they’re only the first step to building a more agile IT infrastructure. Using Web Services to solve integration problems reduces the cost of integration, to be sure, but the promise of substantial ROI is much greater as companies move toward Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs). Such architectures can support flexible business processes and offer return on investment in the form of increased business agility.

The best approach to building such an SOA, especially in light of today’s tight IT budgets, is to take a phased approach that yields positive ROI at every step. The path from simple applications of Web Services to enterprise SOAs, however, is a difficult one. There are many pitfalls that companies might encounter that left unresolved can dramatically increase the risk and cost of an SOA buildout.

This paper outlines one economically viable path to building an enterprise SOA, and addresses many of the pitfalls that companies are likely to encounter along the way.