Service Applications in SharePoint 2010

As you have read my previous post, Shared Service Provider is gone in SharePoint 2010 and it is replaced by Service Applications. Quoted from the SharePoint Conference last month, here are some description for Service Applications:

• The new services model is much more flexible
• Web apps allow a la carte selection model - when you create a new web application, you have the option to select what service application to enable for that web application.
  
• Framework is part of MSF
• Tied to single farm or shared across farms
• Easily scaled out for load balancing high demand service applications.

In the SharePoint Conference, they have shown a Architectural View for the new Service Applications model:

One interesting thing to know about the new model is that we can create custom service applications and this will be the next thing that I will start looking into it. More details on this later.