There?s been a lot of talk about Web Services and Service-oriented architectures, but today?s IT managers aren?t looking for talk -- they?re looking for practical solutions to today?s tough IT problems that are effective, yet inexpensive to implement. Fortunately, companies can use Web Services today to reduce the cost of integration substantially, and used strategically, Service-oriented architectures can reduce the complexity, inflexibility, and brittleness that plagues so many IT organizations.Such architectures, however, take time and effort to put in place -- time that many organizations may feel they can?t afford to spend. As a result, companies should take a step-by-step approach to implementing architectural change in their IT organizations. Fortunately, regardless of whether the existing architecture is n-tier, client/server or even centralized mainframe, these organizations have the ability to build SOAs by providing a working layer of abstraction on top of their existing architecture, as long as they have the appropriate tools. The WebPutty Application Platform provides such tools.
