SOA i.e. Service Oriented Architecture is a software design and software architecture design pattern based on discrete pieces of software providing application functionality as services to other applications. This is known as service-orientation. It is independent of any vendor, product or technology.

A service is a self-contained unit of functionality, such as retrieving an online bank statement. Services can be combined by other software applications to provide the complete functionality of a large software application. SOA makes it easy for computers connected over a network to cooperate. Every computer can run an arbitrary number of services, and each service is built in a way that ensures that the service can exchange information with any other service in the network without human interaction and without the need to make changes to the underlying program itself.

The main benefit of SOA is to allow simultaneous use and easy mutual data exchange between programs of different vendors without additional programming or making changes to the services. These services are also reusable, resulting in lower development and maintenance costs and providing more value once the service is developed and tested. Having reusable services readily available also results in quicker time to market.

SOURCE: INTERNET