Alan Goldstein, managing director of the Bank of New York's technology risk management and architecture division, says service-oriented architecture has let the bank trim 15 percent to 20 percent of the cost of new development and testing. He also reports a 10 percent shrinkage in development cycle time. "The core of what our management and business owners really care about is delivering innovative functionality to customers as quickly as possible, at a high quality and in a reasonably cost-effective manner," says Goldstein.

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The underlying software design philosophy of SOA challenges organizations to create reusable services, rather than one-off applications The reuse aspect of SOA translates into lower costs—since information technology shops can minimize redundant software code—as well as faster software development times. The economy of development means organizations can more readily respond to the evolving needs of customers and business partners.

Those benefits don't come without considerable effort, however. The departure from the traditional software development lifecycle has required some companies to overhaul their IT departments. Service-oriented architecture also requires closer coordination between IT and the business side of the house, a situation that can call for organizational tweaking.

Next page: Retool the IT Department