In building an SOA, The Hartford sought to lower IT costs, increase the ease of doing business, get a faster speed to market and increase agility. The company knows the independent agents it works with are driven by the ease of doing business.

"They will use the few [business partners] that they know so they can get the quote and service maintained very easily," said Moreland.

An SOA needs a reference architecture and governance processes, he said. An SOA moves away from monolithic applications but leverages existing systems. "The nice thing about SOA is it is not rip-and-replace," Moreland said.

The Hartford's SOA features technology such as SOAP, WSDL, XML, and a portal.

Web services management and security are valuable, Moreland said. "I don't think the vendors that sell these understand or are able to articulate the value," of these management platforms, said Moreland.