SOA is not without risk. SOA encourages the creation of multiple, reusable business services that can quickly and easily be composed together to support business processes. By its nature, SOA introduces increased complexity and interdependencies, and this demands that careful attention be paid to management, control, and service lifecycle management.

In many ways IT executives responsible for SOA face the same problems as Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Bernanke needs to support a free market that makes maximum use of economic resources with minimum governance, interventions and safeguards; IT leaders implementing SOA need to support a free market of business services that makes maximum use of IT resources with minimum governance, interventions and safeguards. The goal is to govern enough to ensure maximum business benefits, while mitigating risks. Bernanke famously said that "the best way to get out of trouble is not to get into it in the first place," and those charged with SOA projects would do well to heed his advice and create a foundation for SOA governance, management and quality as early as possible.

Indeed, Gartner has predicted that the leading cause of SOA project failure will be a lack of adequate governance. SOA brings huge advantages, helping align business and technology and making IT a source of innovation rather than a bottleneck to change. And since SOA is not without risks, in 2007 most organizations will mitigate these risks by building a foundation for SOA governance, management and quality across the service lifecycle. 2007 will also see the continued rising importance of the enterprise architect, who will be the steward for ensuring the long term success of SOA, managing consequent change, and encouraging consistency.