Leo: It seems that SOA maturity cannot be measured in isolation. It is connected to a variety of IT governance issues. SOA maturity is a good indicator of EA maturity.
Leo: The reality is that a lot of SOA efforts seem to start bottom up. Technologists recognize that there need to more organized/manageable data integration patterns across the enterprise. The service bus concept is very compelling. So SOA initiatives can start as attemts to integrate enterprise data exchanges via a service bus.
Leo: One surprising result of the survey seems to be the lack of adoption of vertical standards (PESC, IMS). This probably warrants deeper investigation. In 2 cases institutions backed out of using standards because the complexity.
Leo: From the title of the Schumacher book Small is beautiful . Although the practice of SOA ranges from very high-level governance practices to complex technologies, the reality is that small, simple technologies that facilitate integration seem to prevail. Examples:
Rich: Often we can be very self-critical and this should be taken into account when we look at the low scores around SOA maturity