The Big Blue Boot Camp

IBM has been sending its consultants to "boot camp" to learn the principles of service oriented architecture (SOA). Now, the company reportedly has an army of 35,000 that are trained and ready for an SOA invasion.

To clarify, IBM hasrolled out a new consulting practice dedicated to SOA design and implemention. It hopes to leverage these resources togenerate $100 million in revenue in the coming year, which is just the beginning of course.

"This news is significant because it is an indication that 2005 will be the year that large enterprises scale their SOA initiatives up -- if not generally to enterprise-wide implementations, then at least to substantial cross-departmental projects," said ZapThinksenior analyst Jason Bloomberg in one publication. "So we're no longer talking about SOA adoption -- we're talking about scaling SOA now."

While some skeptics have suggested that SOA is pretty high on the hype cycle, IBM insists this new endeavor is market-driven. "The creation of this new practice specifically focused on SOA management is a direct result of demand from our customers," said Michael Liebow, vice president of web services, IBM Global Services,in a news statement. "Many customers have started to experience benefits from their initial SOA implementations and want more."