During a recent solution strategy session for a very large enterprise, a need developed for creating visual prototypes and simulations illustrating the end-state of the enterprise system to be built. The system, or really "solution" (since the ROI would be derived not only from IT, but also from organization change, process re-engineering, physical and digital asset value realization) included many audiences and stakeholder roles plus many distinct (though integrated) business services. "Services" is the key term here, i.e. not "applications" or "websites" – customers would find and use these business services offered by the company, governed with managed agreements and supported by information technology. The best practice SOA methodologies separate business concerns from underlying fulfillment concerns, in a manner that enables reuse and evolution of each – maximizing ROI (hopefully). Business service architecture strategies begin frequently wi...

Here's a great posting by Sara over at Blackstone Technology Group's SOA and Integration Practice , regarding a "flexible, scalable SOA infrastructure testing framework" she and others developed on their Homeland Security Information-Sharing program. She relates "We’ve implemented a highly-efficient and data-driven framework to test an enterprise-scale, highly available SOA infrastructure environment. In the same amount of time that it took to previously build a single test scenario, we were able to develop the initial framework implementation that can quickly support multiple scenarios that include any permutation of components and transports." In other words, look to new SOA-driven testing frameworks and approaches like these, to most thoroughly and efficiently test new SOA/ESB infrastructure deployments. The "old ways" won't work.