I know what you're thinking: SOA hype has reached an absurd level and now someone is literally proclaiming that it will change the world - but bear with me for a minute. Anyone who has been around corporate IT for the last five years or so has seen an avalanche of development work sent offshore for two primary reasons: cheaper unit labor cost and the flat-out inability to find qualified American developers. Also, the mainstay system development model whereby business units built up app silos, which served to minimize reuse and increase integration complexity, demanded a way to deal with the cost of its own inefficiency.
Offshoring was perfect - you could justify using twice as many developers as necessary when they cost one third as much. The trend hasn't been just limited to corporate IT either. Offshore workers are handling many other business functions, though these are mostly lower-level functions like call centers and help desks.
On a human level, I think offshoring has been a great thing. It has uplifted third-world economies and given opportunity to people whose talent means more now than their location. Furthermore, it sure seems that countries that benefit from this type of globalization are more stable than those that don't. Unfortunately, the results for business have been more mixed. Poor management and architecture has lead to many project failures along the way.
