Thomas Erl is the world's top-selling SOA author, Series Editor of the "Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl" (<a href="http://www.soabooks.com" target="_parent">www.soabooks.com</a>), and Editor of The SOA Magazine (<a href="http://www.soamag.com" target="_parent">www.soamag.com</a>). With over 95,000 copies in print world-wide, his books have become international bestsellers and have been formally endorsed by senior members of major software organizations, such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, BEA, Sun, Intel, SAP, and HP.
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His first SOA book "Service-Oriented Architecture: A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services" is a strategic reference guide for creating integrated environments with contemporary technologies within the context of SOA and service-orientation. Released in 2004, this was one of the very first SOA books ever written. 
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His second SOA book is entitled "Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design" and is the first published "how-to" guide to building service-oriented solutions from the ground up. It provides step-by-step processes for service-oriented analysis, service-oriented design and service-oriented business process design, as well as an in-depth exploration of service-orientation as a design paradigm. 
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Thomas' third book, "SOA: Principles of Service Design" (<a href="http://www.soaprinciples.com" target="_parent">www.soaprinciples.com</a>) is a highly acclaimed title dedicated to service engineering and establishing the service-orientation design paradigm. It provides numerous service design techniques and strategies and further includes a comparative analysis between service-orientation and object-orientation. 
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These books are is followed by "SOA Design Patterns" and "Web Service Contract Design and Versioning for SOA," two new books that were co-authored with a series of industry experts and are being released in the latter half of 2008. 
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"SOA Design Patterns" was in development for three years and will provide pattern languages and specialized pattern catalogs for architectural and service design patterns specific to SOA and service-orientation (<a href="http://www.soapatterns.com" target="_parent">www.soapatterns.com</a>), while "Web Service Contract Design and Versioning for SOA" is a highly technical reference guide that documents the modern WS-* platform and provides numerous design and versioning techniques. In his role as Series Editor, Thomas is currently working with over 20 authors to produce four additional books for release throughout 2009. 
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Thomas is the founder of SOA Systems Inc. (<a href="http://www.soasystems.com" target="_parent">www.soasystems.com</a>), a company providing strategic SOA training, certification, and consulting services for international clients, including Fortune 500 companies. Through his work with SOA Systems, Thomas has made several notable contributions to the SOA community, including widely published research that established an industry-wide, cross-platform definition of the service-orientation paradigm and a set of associated principles, as well as a recognized mainstream methodology for building service-orientation solution logic. 
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Thomas is a speaker and instructor for private and public events, and has delivered many workshops and keynote speeches. Papers and articles written by Thomas have been published in numerous industry trade magazines and Web sites, and he has delivered Webcasts and interviews for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal. 
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For more information visit <a href="http://www.thomaserl.com" target="_parent">www.thomaserl.com</a>.