In this study, IDC provides services and software companies with high-level thoughts about services-oriented architectures (SOA) and their impact on the future of the services industry.

"One of the biggest challenges for consultants is to understand the full implication to an organization of an SOA implementation, especially if it is adopted on an enterprisewide level and gets extended externally to customers and partners. To achieve the most value from SOA, consultants must help their clients embed their business processes into their customers' and partners' business processes ? thus, transforming the organization in dramatic ways," says Marianne Hedin, research manager, Worldwide Services Research Program, IDC.