"There seem to be two worlds out there, the world of enterprise architecture and the world of SOA. The funny thing is that those in each world thinks that they can do the other world's jobs."

He clamed that traditional EAs have "not done a stellar job" in understanding SOA opportunities, while the SOA folks have not figured out how SOA itself fits into enterprise architecture. The root of the dilemma is the fact that EAs are perceived in many organizations to be theoreticians who reside in ivory towers.

IT consultant Todd Biske of MometumSI, who was also at the conference, blogged in response that the onus would be on EA to make its artifacts more relevant to those on SOA's front lines.