Web services are increasingly becoming a key component of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) because of their ability to interoperate with several platforms, said a panel of distributed computing experts. However, there is still some rocky terrain to navigate before anyone will be able to really enjoy full SOA implementation.

But officials from vendors like Sonic Software, Metastorm, Computer Associates, Digital Evolution and Tarari, speaking at the Web Services on Wall Street 2005 show here this week, offered a caveat.

While SOAs are gaining momentum from an evolution in Web services standards and adoption, there is an overwhelming lack of software tools to connect rigid legacy applications, which tend to operate in silos.