Abstract. As it is known, the management adaptability to the changes taking place in the environment where it is acting represents a key factor for survival and development of an organization. As a reaction to the external signals, the internal change may be superficial when it affects only the development of activity in different sectors, or might be profound, when it changes the main processes and rules of the business and even the philosophy of the company’s existence. Speaking about structural changes, one of the most common approaches of the modern management is the re-design of the business architecture. The new architectural models such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), presented in this paper, come with important advantages, but their implementation is not always very easy. This paper tries to present some of the most common encountered contextual characteristics which are able to start the implementation of Service Oriented Architecture, some advantages of this concept as well as some practical approaches of implementing.

Keywords: service oriented architecture; business process management (BPM); governance tools of service oriented architecture; OODA loop; service oriented architecture philosophy.