It took a few years, but there's finally cogent evidence that service-oriented architectures will be the corporate IT infrastructure of the future. The proof?

Exhibit A: Every major enterprise application vendor -- including SAP and Oracle -- is building its products around Web services standards intrinsic to service-based frameworks.

Exhibit B: IT managers, having spent the last year testing Web-based development tools, messaging protocols and composite applications in controlled environments, are beginning to buy into claims that service-oriented architecture (SOA) can deliver benefits including software reuse and easy application integration extendable to outside partners.

Exhibit C: Even CIOs and CEOs are hooked. Emboldened by the flexible structure that promises to liberate their companies from the confines of client/server architectures, executives see SOA as a way to sensibly move and exchange data wherever it makes business sense.

With SOA gaining momentum as the next-generation underpinning for enterprise applications, the next logical query is: What does this mean for the factory floor?