I have been very critical of the SOA articles that have been written over the last several... well, ever since people started writing them.  They have typically come across as very self serving (simply promoting a product, vendor, or organization) and providing very little insight to others starting to embark on the SOA journey.  I belief this is a significant factor in why very, very, very few organizations are really making much progress with SOA.  We talk about the potential reuse that comes from SOA, but very few organizations have been able to reuse the lessons learned by other organizations that are either experiencing success or making mistakes.  That is pretty obvious when every article is rehashing the same topics, focusing on a single application and/or the basic value proposition of Web services.   I can't tell you how many articles I've been sucked into with an enticing title that simply talked about how somebody benefited from the interoperability of Web services.  While these articles can provide some value (especially if they get past the promotion of a particular product or vendor), they have contributed to the industry confusion between Web services and SOA and have at best neutralized their benefit.  Part of the problem is that organizations aren't opening up very much in this space - probably because a lot of early SOA efforts are mistakes and people don't like talking about those.  The other part of the problem is that SOA transcends technology by involving people and processes and technical writers aren't inclined to branch out into those dimensions, either because they don't recognize them, they don't want to write about them, or they don't think their readers are interested.

However, I have found the relevance and quality of articles improving quite a bit over the last few months.  I have found, of all places, CIO Magazine (http://www.cio.com/topic/1498/SOA) to be one of the best examples of this shift.  They have a dedicated section to SOA and have published some real gems like the recent article on how Qualcomm broke down their IT Silos through SOA and blogs on organizational challenges, skill sets, and testing.  I would have never even given CIO Magazine a thought if not for somebody specifically calling my attention to it a couple months ago (thanks Michael!)  This probably shouldn't have surprised me too much because CIO Magazine probably has the type of writer that is comfortable with the blend of organizational and technical challenges and their various dimensions.  Part of this improvement can also be attributed to organizations that are opening up a bit more to these writers.  This can also be found in the quality of material coming from the analysts, which is also very encouraging.  Hopefully this trend continues as it is the sharing of this end-to-end experience across all dimensions that will allow other organizations to be more productive in their SOA efforts and accelerate our maturity as an industry.