As numerous organizations are planning to embark on their first endeavors in service-oriented architecture (SOA), it is important to recognize that the necessary organizational transformation has as much to do with cultural transformation, as it has to do with open, Internet standards-based design. In fact, the very nature of how business and IT view each other's role and how the enterprise views its relationships with its marketplace partners and customers is being altered. Such cultural change has never come easily and represents a significant organizational dilemma.
At the heart of an enterprise SOA transformation is also the need to "think differently" about how an enterprise acquires and manages IT systems. Albert Einstein might well have been talking about the challenges of SOA rollout when he said, "No problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it." Building service-based systems involves a shift in thinking from large-scale, centrally planned IT systems to smaller, modular development that requires collaboration and consensus building among all of the stakeholders of an end-to-end IT process.
