Bill de hÓra has some relevant thoughts for the *cough* thought leaders *cough*:

First, both enterprise software and services organisations need to rein in their marketing and sales divisions, as strange as that might sound. In essence, they need to stop promising miracles. What has happened with WS-* promotion, and what is happening with SOA is bad for the industry, bad for shareholder value. Customers will come to reject the vendor/analyst/consultant triumvirate if it comes to appear to be nothing more than a racket. In effect, that would be a rejection of the entire market. This helps no-one, least of all customers, dependent as they are on software and related services. More realistic approaches to the market need to be found - "rip and replace" of IT assets isn't a sustainable model (ironically WS-* in the beginning was about avoiding such expense).

The enterprisey architects will pay no attention to this though, and will continue to drink the analyst kool-aid - because doing anything else would be a (personal) political risk. Failure is way, way safer than trying something that isn't "mainstream".

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