Two years ago I was at BEA’s European subset of its BEAWorld event, at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel, when a man from BT got a standing ovation for a presentation. A rare event in itself, the reason it happened was simple – he had simply told the audience that doing this `SOA thing’ was not as easy as some of the vendors liked to make out.

Given that his presentation followed immediately after two valedictory pitches from the company’s CEO, Alfred Chuang, and VP of Solutions and Product Marketing, Bill Roth, where the excellence of BEA technology was understandably lauded, this was hardly surprising.

What is a little more surprising is the fact that, two years on, a survey by PMP Research has shown that the gulf between the technology vendors and the business users is still as wide and unbridgeable as ever. SOA is already being seen as a `great white hope’. The next logical step is that becomes, along with so many other developments from the IT vendors, the next `great white elephant’.

In a way, it is hardly surprising. The one real trouble with SOA is the fact that, because the technology vendors came up with the notion, they are the ones that claim the privilege of selling it. And sell it they try to do – and try, and try. The trouble is, it is not an `it ‘ to be sold like a PC or iPod.

Two years ago Alfred Chuang launched into a BEAWorld keynote presentation by referring to business needs, but within minutes descended into a detailed discussion of Enterprise Service Bus architectures and the rest. The guy next to me fell asleep.

This is not a criticism, by the way; it is just a fact of life when technical people talk about what they have created. But to business users it is the equivalent of someone looking at a Leonardo Da Vinci sketch while someone goes on at length about the manufacturing processes used by the charcoal makers – technically interesting if you like that type of thing, but pointless to the subject.

The survey showed that the fundamental reasons that underpin the existence of SOA-oriented technology are still there – 88 per cent of respondents still need to integrate and interoperate disparate information systems. It is reasonable to suggest that, by now, most of the fundamental technical solutions have been developed and can be effectively implemented to satisfy the needs of many potential customers.

So why isn’t it happening? Why does the communications divide between business and technologists still exist? Maybe it is because the vendors need to stop talking, certainly about what they can offer. This is now about what users perceive they need to buy from vendors in order to solve problems that are defined in their terms.

It is not about what the vendors want to sell to them, especially if it is all that they actually have available.