A recent webinar given by my colleague Peter Cousins, the technical director for Artix, is currently featured in an ebizQ article about SOA. The title of the article is "Integration on the Edge" (which I borrowed for the title of this blog entry). Definitely worth the read.
Why is it that IT shops seem to continuously try to convince themselves that it's possible to create and maintain homogeneous systems by simply buying into the "right" technology du jour? Peter explains how traditional integration approaches are always oriented around gluing services together after the fact (typically in a slow and costly hub-and-spoke fashion), when it's much less feasible and much more expensive, rather than just making them integration-ready themselves. He explains how moving integration "to the edges" results in systems that avoid technology du jour lock-in and more easily deal with inevitable and continuous technology and business changes, thus making it easier for you to build and maintain a true service-oriented system that actually delivers real business ROI.