The project continues to evolve as managers hunt for methods to ease the work. For example, Wachovia's IT division last week added a connectivity layer to its architecture. Karr said that the new layer, an enterprise service bus (ESB) from IBM, can handle message orchestration, transformation and routing.

"We're trying to figure out what types of things we have to have in place so the outsourcers can build in this distributed environment," Karr said. "[With the ESB], we can put out some dummy services for the outsourcers to use to test their services with."

The chief architect of enterprise architecture at a large U.S.-based financial institution, who asked not to be named, said recently hired developers there are embracing the organization's shift to SOA. At the same time, veteran mainframe and legacy experts are bucking the change. The plan to use SOA technology "has not been easy for our developers," the architect said.

To ease the transition, the financial institution created a grass-roots community for its 1,200 developers to share best practices and connect with the owners of Web services. In addition, the organization is helping the mainframe and legacy developers fine-tune their skills while it hires new developers for the SOA project, the architect added.

The institution plans over the next 18 months to create an SOA with sufficient security and performance to extend Web services beyond the firewall, the official said.