In theory, SOAs have the potential to deliver greater efficiency and economies of scale in the enterprise, through a more flexible approach. In practice, however, SOAs have swallowed millions of dollars of investment in IT infrastructure while failing to satisfy business demands for reduced costs, greater agility, and competitive advantage in increasingly fast-paced global marketplaces.

SOAs themselves are not the problem. The fundamental problem is the great complexity of IT infrastructures and the absence of an integrated architectural foundation that enables interoperability among silos of heterogeneous applications built up over years and even decades. In many organisations, well over 50 percent of the IT budget is devoted to building and maintaining points of integration among legacy systems specific to finance, supply chain, customer management, and other mission-critical functions.