'For the last 40 years, business has viewed IT as its principal tool to increase productivity, and rightly so. Industries as diverse as retailing and financial services have been transformed by technology, especially when used in a networked way. Yet very often, IT has constrained the evolution of those business processes by imposing rigid technology implementations on them. And even worse, as IT has grown and become more important, it has become more complex and difficult to manage, especially in larger enterprises. In some cases the sheer complexity of the IT environment has started to limit the ability of companies to innovate. However, as Paul Allen shows, recent advances in IT processes and technologies, especially service-oriented architectures are starting to free companies up from these constraints, and allow them to once again align their IT processes in support of their business processes. Service Orientation: Winning Strategies and Best Practices charts the course for handling what promises to be as profound a change to IT as any that has occurred in the last few decades.' John A Swainson, President and CEO, CA