<p>Service Oriented Architecture is generating a buzz across the whole IT industry. Propelled by standards-based technologies like XML, Web Services, and SOAP, SOA is quickly moving from pilot projects to mainstream applications critical to business operations. One of the key standards accelerating the adoption of SOA is Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL). <br /><br />BPEL was created to enable effective composition of web services in a service-oriented environment. In the past two years, BPEL has become the most significant standard to elevate the visibility of SOA from IT to business level. BPEL is not only commoditizing the integration market, but it is also offering organizations a whole new level of agility - ability to rapidly change applications in response to the changing business landscape. BPEL enables organizations to automate their business processes by orchestrating services within and across the firewall. It forces organizations to think in terms of services. Existing functionality is exposed as services. New applications are composed using services. Communication with external vendors and partners is through services. Services are reused across different applications. Services are, or should be, everywhere!</p>