Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) projects have evolved. A couple of years ago it would have been sufficient to demonstrate connectivity between systems that were previously isolated. Nowadays these connections must provide guarantees of reliability, security, and performance. Delivering on such requirements presents a number of challenges.
Not all of the challenges faced during an SOA project are technical. However, it's the technical requirements that are best understood and most often explicitly stated as requirements. Other issues relate to the changes required in the way IT operations are organized in a company. While it's often the technical challenges that are focused on in the early projects, many organizations are discovering that this approach doesn't make for a successful SOA deployment.