If SOA isn't being used to transform your company, if it's not changing the entire way you buy and build software, then you ought to be asking yourself if you're aiming high enough. Executives apparently have grown sick and tired of being told good business ideas can't be implemented. It's hard to blame them. Inflexibility and a seeming disconnect from the goals that drive the rest of the company hasn't made IT the most popular kid on the block.

Though you hear it all the time, systems need to conform to people instead of constantly asking people to conform to systems. It's not just some throw-away statement. People really mean it and they expect it to happen. More than anything else, that's what the executives are saying about SOA. They're looking to bring IT to heel.