This article explains how an Open Source SOA Roadmap can use a typical Web application project's funding as the basis for a successful SOA transition effort. It is the first of three articles that explains how open source technologies and techniques can be leveraged to successfully deliver SOA solutions given the current economic downturn.

The pain of these economic times is real. Staying competitive and thriving today means you must "think outside the box" to manage costs and exploit opportunities like never before. Most IT shops are currently in the commercial SOA box. A box where the transition of enterprise architecture to a service-oriented enterprise architecture is accomplished by commercial technologies and techniques. It typically costs millions of dollars to fund a commercial SOA transition versus thousands of dollars for an open source SOA transition governed by an Open Source SOA Roadmap.