What is SOA?
Services Oriented Architecture in business terms is a concept that creates a layer of communication on top of your legacy and new computer systems to convert those systems into assets and to utilize them in the best possible manner; while outside of your enterprise, creating an open communication environment that is fast, bi-directional "talking mode" where computers are talking with each other (B2B) over the internet to perform business in an automated fashion for the most part.
Web 2.0 and now Web 3.0 are all based upon the XML technology.
Automation brings efficiency, cost avoidance, higher data integrity, and less mistakes. Open communication brings down the cost of doing business, opens up a lot more avenues of finding service providers and getting the best value and service from them.
Think of having one message that your computer sends to your service provider's computers asking for their price, availability, quality for a print job you want them to do. In response, you get five responses and you choose one of the service providers to execute the transaction. This is done automatically when your data is marked to query service providers; service providers' computers are already setup with rules to give you a response in minutes or seconds instead of processing your Mail.dat for a few hours or days before they can quote you a price. This technology brings true value to Intelligent Mail / Full Service by opening up communication in an automated fashion between mailing industry partners.