Over the past year and a half, there have been many articles, books, and blogs covering SOA Governance.  While I initially thought this was a good shift by the industry to focus on the process and people side of SOA, I now realize that most of these efforts are actually attempts to expand the agenda of some specific technology or product as a silver bullet for SOA.  These "SOA Governance" discussions are actually speaking to Service Governance - tools and capabilities to help organizations manage and monitor their Web services.  While service management is an important capability in an organization, the narrow focus on service governance is really missing the mark for an IT organization.  What enterprises really need to focus on is IT Governance, not SOA Governance.  The best reference I have found so far on IT Governance is the book by Peter Weill and Jeanne Ross.  It does a great job of explaining how IT needs clear decision boundaries and an accountability framework to maximize the value and efficiency of IT.  If you have a lot of "services", then you will need SOA principles and service management to account for those elements of your environment, but it has to be part of the entire ecosystem requiring visibility and control.  Governing services provides little value if you don't have the appropriate governance over the systems and processes surrounding and supporting your services.  This is akin to a city defining laws for just one neighborhood or section of town.  While the laws may differ between zones, the entire area needs a well defined governance model so that everyone can coexist, whether they be services, processes, n-tier applications, objects, or hardware.  Services by definition cannot be treated as an island and any organization that just chooses to focus on SOA Governance is unfortunately doing just that.