Stepper: For the most part, we've gone the SOAP route, but I'd say we're not nearly done identifying and promoting specific standards. The governance body that I mentioned was formed in the first quarter? There are two of them. One is a SOA standards board, and that's exactly the kinds of things that they're incrementally defining, rolling out, and promoting in terms of standards. The 100 projects I mentioned are the projects that, over the course of the next 12-plus months, we expect to onboard to our SOA infrastructure. And based on the 20 or so that we have live right now, we're able to get real-world examples, extract what we think are meaningful standards, and then promote them in time for the remainder of the next 12 months.

So the answer to your question is, it's a work in progress. We have the people in place, and we think the timing is right, to do it in an academic way, but in a way that is relevant to the live applications that are coming onboard over the next 12 months.

CIO: What are some insights you've gained that you didn't anticipate, now that those first 20 applications are actually live? Any surprises? Any challenges? Any brick walls that you ran into?

Stepper: As much as I said we think we did a great job trying to get the infrastructure to production grade early on in the overall SOA timeline, in retrospect, I would have done that even earlier. I would have formed those governance structures even earlier, too, because I think we-and I think this is probably true in most organizations-I think we underestimated how large a transformation this could be; that is, going from vertically-aligned IT operations environment to something that's trying to make much greater use of shared assets.

It's not just about teaching developers how to use Web services. It's changing how the funding is done for shared services. It's putting governance structures in place. It's defining engineering and process standards. It's creating new roles where you have actual process analysts; roles that just don't exist today. I'm glad we have things that are live, because nothing beats having real projects out there that you've learned from as an organization. But I'd still look to put more weight, more resources, behind the early engineering of the infrastructure, and between the early decisions around process and engineering standards. I would do that a lot earlier than I did.