The single largest cost of information technology (IT) systems integration islabor. To reduce cost and improve efficiency, it's necessary to reducecomplexity, which is the main motivation for the use of Service OrientedArchitecture with Web services. Why SOAs and Web services? Consensusaround the software industry is that customers are seeking cost-effective fixesfor their integration issues en masse. SOAs and Web services facilitate that.This book describes the best approach to designing and developing a SOAbased integration solution using Web services technologies, and describes howa SOA provides a foundation for addressing other IT requirements, such asmulti-channel client access, application interoperability through one servicecalling another service, and business process management through servicecomposition into flows.