Interesting article in Enterprise Architect this month - Rules Evolution in Service-Oriented Architecture - by Bruce Lowenthal.
It's a great article and I don't have much to add to Bruce's comments, so instead I will refer to you to other things I have said about SOA and BPM and some Case Studies that show the kinds of benefits Bruce discusses.
I would just like to add one thing - don't underestimate the power of adding analytics to these kinds of "decision services". Business rules are great for adding agility and ensuring transparency and an SOA approach is great for consistency (rules help here too if your whole architecture is not SOA) but analytics can add precision, making your decisions more accurate, more profitable, less risky etc.
Thanks Bruce.
