Those were the words Burton Group analyst Anne Thomas Manes told colleague Chris Howard when he asked her what one overriding message IT executives should hear about service-oriented architecture.

Howard, vice president and service director for Burton Group, was hoping for something more inspiring to tell the audience during a session he led Tuesday at the Software 2008 portion of Interop Las Vegas. Howard was asked to give a kind of State of the Union address on SOA, a much-hyped approach to building IT systems that are flexible and capable of reusing old assets.