SOBA is Service Oriented Business Applications, a phrase/term coined by Gartner’s Charles Abrams in 2004. More and more companies are adopting the use of SOBAs in their SOA architectures and in their integration framework.

To read more about what Abrams says about SOBAs, please refer to this article Gartner: SOBAs will revolutionize application integration. Though this article is dated 2004, it gives you an initial idea of what SOBAs are. For more up to date information, you might want to refer to the following company’s website.

A company called Webify Solutions has been making a buzz in this space. They have built industry specific SOBAs for insurance, healthcare and other industries. This is the only company that I have heard of building SOBAs.

Cheers,
Steve Lokam