While enterprise IT managers can appreciate the promise of integrating diverse services and applications that can communicate with each other, industry leaders say we are just beginning to receive full value from SOAs.“I’d say we are above the ankles,” said Jonathan W. Hill, associate partner for technology and integration at Accenture, speaking at InfoWorld’s SOA Executive Forum in San Jose, Calif. Thursday.Hill, appearing on a panel that addressed business agility inherent in SOA, said the gains are real but still relatively small. “We are in the early stages” of SOA integration, he said. Kerrie Holley, CTO at the SOA and Web services center for excellence with IBM, agreed and added that the road is clear for enterprise managers seeking to implement SOA.“Fundamentally, I believe we will see SOA take advantage of the best practices we see emerging,” Holley said.Although managers face initial cost considerations in implementing an SOA, the gains over time result in a better ROI as applications become integrated, said Parag Doshi, practice principal for enterprise integration in Hewlett-Packard services. “The cost is initially higher, but setting up governing structures over time,” will create ROI, he said. “You don’t get savings until you start unplugging stuff.” Doshi cited Ceredian, a human resources outsourcing and credit card services company he said paid HP $6 million and ultimately saved $100 million for a legacy redesign conducted in an “an SOA fashion.”Ideally, SOA implementation will integrate with business processes as enterprises embrace SOAs, the panel agreed. “We are seeing a move toward more process-facing (applications) in organizations,” Hill said. “We are seeing process officers being created in organizations at the “C” level as (SOA implementations) link IT with business analysis.” Holley agreed. “In organizations, applications are no longer structured in components, but structured around services.”Sean Rhody, chief architect at Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), added that business processes enable the distributed services promised by SOA proponents. He cited CSC’s SOA work for Dunn & Bradstreet, which provides business credit reports and other services.CSC helped open up more of the company’s services to customers, he said. “We helped them design their Global Awareness Toolkit. It’s part of your business process but external to your business,” and, as such, available to customers. Also at the InfoWorld SOA Executive Forum today, executives from BEA Systems and Motorola spoke, which my colleague Paul Krill covered in a news story. And panelists called for better security within SOAs. InfoWorld editor at large Ephraim Schwartz wrote about the panel here. Meanwhile, one analyst firm this week is calling for a more precise definition of SOAs. — By Jack McCarthy, blogging live from the SOA Executive Forum show floor. Software Development