Chasing SOA unicorns

I spotted an amusing analogy for the evolution of SOA programmes by Neal Ford in his blog: The perfect SOA is like a unicorn - a mythical beast - in the real world, we struggle to change our enterprise architectures from donkeys to horses.  To quote Neal:

"most company's enterprise architecture looks more like a broken-down donkey. The SOA experiment is to see how close you can get to a unicorn before you run out of money. Maybe you'll get to Shetland pony and stop. Or perhaps you'll make it all the way to a thoroughbred racehorse. There are even a few that'll create unicorns, but they are exceedingly rare."

Of course, there is nothing wrong with striving to create a unicorn - with the realistic expectation that your SOA will end up with something a lot better than a donkey but probably without a horn. 

Ronan

p.s. Myth experts will recall that unicorns can only be captured by the pure of heart.  Perhaps that is where the problem lies with SOA as well...