Freivald said iWay integration tools essentially work as a plug-and-play mechanism capable of linking together disparate applications, whether they are proprietary, standards-based or legacy systems.

The value of an SOA does not come from technology integrating the applications, but rather from business's ability to dictate what's required from IT, he said. "It should be a top-down approach," Frievald said. "Business steps are defined from the top, then IT builds the services that [support] the business requirements."

IWay's technology sits on top of existing enterprise applications such as ERP, CRM and databases. As a middleware "fabric" the technology pulls together information from these systems, transforms and presents the content to the user in a form consistent with business needs.

"Message recognition and content transformation [are] the hardest parts of integration, and that's where we really excel," said John Senor, president of iWay Software. Prior to the SOA Middleware launch, iWay was a provider of software adapters for application integration and counts for its customers Microsoft Corp. and BEA Systems Inc.

Microsoft's BizTalk Sever 2006 uses .NET-based application adapters purchased from iWay last year, said David McJannet, Microsoft Canada's SQL Server senior product manager. BizTalk Server 2006 is also a middleware tool that serves as a "single entry point" for enterprise applications as well trading partner applications, he said.