As if the technology aspects of building a service-oriented architecture environment aren't challenging enough, there's another obstacle those with SOA aspirations have to face: lack of expertise.

The shortage of SOA understanding often leaves enterprise IT executives tapping into vendor knowledge. "Talk to as many vendors as you can afford to," says Joseph Gaus, enterprise architect at Midland, Mich., Dow Corning. "As you talk to more and more vendors, you start to figure out what they're really solving, what they're good at."