Not enough people understand what SOA really means and is being used in the same way as the Y2K rush of the last century. While there is a group of people who had to live through and manage the Y2K humbug, those people and their memories are now fading. To fill that void, we have been hearing consultants promote SOA. A simple explanation of what needs to be done, and in this economic climate, is to keep your data and your systems simple, with clearly defined and documented interfaces so that the idea of “loosely coupled” interactions between the numerous sources of data is possible. What you DO NOT WANT is tight integration. Tight integration leads to vendor lock in and increasing costs. I hope that there are clued in CIOs that can see this. That they will NOT fall in to the vendor-trap that many of the proprietary vendors have laid. Time will tell.

In the meantime enjoy this, from http://www.gregthearchitect.com/episode_SOA_this.html.