Yesterday, I received an email from a company doing a survey that stated the following: 

The Web Services Survey examines the usage and future expectations of developers working with and/or creating Web Services applications.  Also known as Services Oriented Architecture, many engineering professionals think that Web Services is the computing platform of the future and will revolutionize the way applications interact.”

It seems there is still a lot of learning needed to realize that Service Oriented Architecture does not equal Web Services.   IMO this thinking can lead an IT organization into a great deal of trouble as it fails to take into account the “A” of SOA.   SOA is about planning and building out an architectural foundation for agility and re-use.  

Embracing a SOA approach can have a major payoff in IT agility but it requires planning and creating a foundation for service visibility (how can a distributed organization find services they need instead of creating service duplication?), trust (services are single points of value or failure and must be trustworthy) and control (SOA introduces new dependencies, faster rate of change and more requirements on operations).    

Finally, SOA does not dictate a particular technology.  Anything exposed as a consume-able, trusted, shared service can be considered part of SOA:  Web Services and REST services and EJB services and….you get my point.