SOA: It’s a question many in IT would not see coming, at least not now, but David Linthicum asks it nonetheless. Could lack of SOA drive shareholder lawsuits? Indeed, you read that right. Seems a bit far-fetched but, “shareholders are looking at enterprise architecture efficiencies, along with accounting and reporting practices,” he reports. A bit surprising, perhaps, yet it makes perfect sense. “At issue is the fact that many major public companies don’t have efficient enterprise architectures, and thus the business is unable to adapt to new market opportunities, reuse key IT assets, and [ultimately] provide the maximum return to shareholders.” Related: BEA app server gets SOA, Web 2.0. Virtualization: The VMware show is going on this week, and David Marshall reports live that Cisco CEO John Chambers predicts a second wave. As in, another round of innovation since the Internet, built on top of virtualization and the power of the network, creating new services and support models that will be driven by consumers, Marshall reports. Best of the blogs: When it comes to systems and network monitoring, even big plans tend to fall short in the execution phase. “Most IT shops have purchased big iron monitoring tools that turned out to be larger projects than the IT team could bite off,” Harper Mann writes in It’s all about working together. Enter open source and monitoring experts. “Add some open source to kick start that delayed big iron project. The business wins as it gets benefit from a stalled investment. You win with a flexible and expandable solution with more capability than was originally spec’ed.” Related: Our blogger covers Gartner’s open source conference. Video: A three-minute primer on ILM, or information lifecycle management, the “all-embracing strategy to deal with the ballooning quantity and variety of information flooding the enterprise.” ILM is based on two concepts: not all data has the same value and whatever value it has changes over time. “Enterprise are applying information lifecycle management principles one application at a time.” Watch it here. Technology Industry