For example, Marriott International Inc. has identified SOA as one of its three strategic technology pillars, along with business intelligence tools and commercial off-the-shelf software.

The Bethesda, Md.-based company is tapping SOA technologies to help shorten software development times and pull more value out of its legacy systems.

But to obtain those kinds of advantages, you need to "turn your organization on its side" and incorporate SOA into thinking enterprise wide, said Steve Wolf, Marriott's senior enterprise architect. "What separates SOA from a minor technology change is the fact that this is a fundamental change in the way we do business," he said during a session at The Open Group LLC's Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference.