The Service Component Architecture (SCA) specifications define a programming model for assembling software services in a service-oriented architecture that offers great flexibility and agility, but which can create performance bottlenecks and won't necessarily take advantage of today's multi-core processors.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a software development approach that has been widely adopted because of its flexibility and agility. However, many SOA implementations experience performance bottlenecks and may not take advantage of today's multi-core processors.

The SCA specifications define a unified reference architecture for assembling software services in a SOA. Today's business environment of constantly rising data volumes and cost saving pressures make increased performance a high priority and while SCA provides many benefits to SOA deployments, it can suffer from the same performance challenges.