Sam Higgins is now with Forrester Research, Inc. as a senior analyst. Formerly he was a director of Encode Services, an Australian information and communications technology consulting firm, and managed application architecture direction for the Innovation and Planning unit of Queensland Transport's Information Services Branch. He has over twelve years' experience in both traditional and model-driven environments, and is a popular international speaker. Sam was a driving force behind Queensland Transport's adoption of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform and subsequent Web services implementations.

Paul McRae is the application architect for the Innovation and Planning unit of Queensland Transport's Information Services Branch. He has almost twenty years' experience in the IT industry, was a key player in the introduction of an SOA within Queensland Transport, and was instrumental in developing Queensland Transport's CBD initiatives, J2EE applications, enterprise architecture, and Web services.

In this chapter Sam and Paul share their experiences in Queensland Transport's transition to service orientation.

Background

Queensland is Australia's north-eastern state, covering nearly 1.7 million km2, and home to approximately 3.6 million people. Known as the “Smart State,” Queensland is a center of significant leading-edge technology developments. Queensland Transport is a department within the State Government of Queensland.

Queensland Transport has a budget of approximately A$1.3 billion and over 4,700 staff throughout the state, and is responsible specifically for the regulation of land, sea, and aviation transport in Queensland.