To help companies succeed through the various stages of SOA evaluation and deployment, IBM has announced eight new industry-specific SOA Roadmaps spanning six industries.

Each of the SOA roadmaps contains a business blueprint, which helps customers map the business side of an SOA strategy, and an industry-specific framework, which includes core technology used to execute the business blueprint. The new SOA Roadmaps focus on critical business process areas within a given industry. Some examples include online booking for the insurance industry, member enrollment and benefits/eligibility for healthcare, payments for banking, personal shopping for retail, service provisioning and service delivery for telecommunications and supply chain collaboration for industrial.

The business blueprints begin with detailed research that outlines industry challenges and how those industries can benefit from SOA. Each piece of research examines specific business scenarios, describing how those processes are typically executed today and how they could be improved with SOA. The business blueprint also recommends an SOA entry point to make it easier for businesses to know the best place to start to deliver the most immediate business benefits. IBM's SOA entry points make it easier for customers to approach and initiate SOA projects. The three business entry points include people, process and information. The two technical entry points include connectivity and reuse.

The IBM SOA Industry Frameworks include technology from IBM and IBM Business Partners to help use SOAs. They provide customers with reusable, industry-specific software modules called business services based on the WebSphere Business Services Fabric that perform individual tasks tailored to the industry's users, policies and methods. New SOA Industry Frameworks are specific to the banking, healthcare, telecom, retail, and insurance industries to add to the first framework for Product Lifecycle Management, which was announced late last year. Additional frameworks will follow later this year.

IBM is also announcing six new SOA professional services focused on SOA Diagnostic, SOA Strategy, SOA Implementation Planning, Business Process Management Enabled by SOA, SOA Design Development and Integration, and SOA Management. New capabilities include infrastructure and strategy workshops for SOA Strategy professional services, web application and portal infrastructure services for SOA Design, Development and Integration and a new testing center of excellence for SOA management.