Service-oriented architecture (SOA) for distributed computing has become increasingly popular due to the great advantage that distributed applications can be rapidly synthesized with the needed services provided by various service providers through broadband networks. Systems based on SOA are called Service-based Systems (SBS). An important and difficult issue is how to develop SBS adaptable to constantly changing user requirements, environments and resource constraints. In this paper, an intelligent control architecture is presented to address this issue. This architecture has three layers based on the intelligent control theory for developing and deploying SBS. An example to illustrate the intelligent control architecture for adaptive SBS is given and preliminary experimental data is presented to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach. 1