Tools for building composite applications with the service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach are a sticking point with Mark Taber, the new CEO of Active Endpoints, Inc., the ActiveBPEL vendor.

Available SOA tools, while comprehensive, are more than the average coder can quickly learn to use, he argues, saying, "As a result projects get stuck." Having been an executive working with enterprise architects on SOA at DataPower and then at IBM after it was acquired, he isn't faulting vendors with comprehensive tools for SOA orchestration, but he says a new approach is needed to get SOA development unstuck.

Basing his argument for a different approach to SOA tooling on experience working with enterprise architects during the past five years, he said the irony is that the basic infrastructure for SOA is in place at many companies, but it is being under-utilized.