Combining business and technology

Farber: The winners will deliver tools that enable drag-and-drop manipulation of business processes.

Gardner: If SOA is a methodology, as well as a technology, then vendors are not just providing code and servers and platforms, they have to provide a partnership in moving to the new methodology. SOA aids and abets the professional services organization.

Gillmor: That implies the rise of a middle layer of aggregators, doesn't it?

Gardner: Yes. It redefines the ecology of outsourcing, if IBM can really accomplish SOA both as a methodology and as a computer science.

Farber: You're talking about business process outsource.

Gardner: That's right.