By Gartner's reckoning, more than half of the new mission-critical "operational applications and business processes" that companies create in 2007 will be created using SOA techniques. And looking further out, Gartner believes that by 2010, more than 80 percent of these applications and processes created that year will use SOA techniques. But don't think the transition to SOA is necessarily going to be a smooth one, even if it is inevitable.

"New software products for SOA have hit the market, but given their immaturity, have disappointed users in terms of reliability, performance, and productivity," said Frank Kenney, a research director at Gartner. "SOA principles have been applied too rigidly, and this has led to unsatisfactory outcomes as projects became too costly and didn't meet deadlines."