The reasons an organization undertakes a SOA implementation are generally focused on achieving three goals: agility, reuse, and risk mitigation. These goals are business oriented, but are primarily supported by IT through the re-architecture of its core systems and methods of integration using SOA principles.

It is not enough, however, for IT and the business to concern itself with only the applications and software systems used to conduct business (such as CRM, ERP, and SCM) to achieve these goals and arrive at what can be considered a successful SOA initiative. A successful SOA implementation relies as much on the flexibility of your network as it does the services and applications over which it will be delivered. Just as brittle, inflexible application integration technologies have been deemed unsuitable and unable to meet today's shifting business needs, so too have the static, inflexible network technologies become a hindrance to the delivery of dynamic, flexible service-oriented applications.