When I first discussed the concept of "JaBoWS," the acronym coined by Joe McKendrick standing for "Just a Bunch of Web Services," or in other words, not SOA, I expressed the opinion that perhaps trying to globally define how services must act in order to comprise a Service Oriented Architecture was defeating the purpose. While you want a "true" SOA, that has to be defined in terms of your own business and services, and while it is positive to strive for all the various details which the experts have decided make up a well formed SOA, it might be worth throwing together a bunch of web services to start with, if that helped fill your needs.

Now, Jeff Schneider has gone even further, and suggests in this post that perhaps JaBoWS is a perfectly normal, even necessary, step on the way to well-formed SOA.

I'll let you read his arguments for yourself, but I find them pretty persuasive.