At this stage, standards are set for the technical governance of an SOA implementation, typically under the leadership of the architecture organization. Standard SOA infrastructure and components, such as an ESB, a services and policies repository, an exception-management service, a transformation service and a single sign-on service, are used to foster greater re-use of services, as well as provide tight management and control of services across an organization.

Level 3: Business services and collaborative services

Level 3 features the introduction of business-oriented services, such as business process management (BPM). With a focus on the partnership between technology and business organizations, Level 3 optimizes the flexibility of business processes, allowing IT to respond quickly to changing business requirements.

For example, a Level 3 project utilizing BPM might use a Universal Description, Discovery and Integration registry to find a funds-transfer service that could significantly reduce settlement times. This service would be connected to the ESB process within hours of recognizing the business need.

Level 4: Measured business services