While at the Gartner Web Services / Integration conference, I sat through a particularly interesting session about "SOA Governance". A key takeaway (in my opinion) was that SOA governance is really a part of overall IT governance which in the end depends upon process and people commitment to that process. This isn't likely news to saavy IT folks; there is no product that can serve as a "magic bullet", so to speak. But, how many times have we heard that a product alone does not completely solve any specific problem?

The best line I heard during the event was delivered by Gartner analyst Paolo Malinverno during his session:

"There are a lot of ash tray makers out there that think they are in the auto industry because cars have ash trays."

This, of course, was mentioned while a slide up on the screen depicting where the various SOA application vendors fit in terms of their capabilities.