Many people equate web-services with SOA and consider it the only
viable option for SOA implementations. Jason Bloomberg disagrees and recently opined regarding “Divorcing SOA and Web-Services”

“Perhaps the most aggravating of misperceptions surrounding service-oriented architecture (SOA) in the marketplace is that SOA and Web services are the same thing. This point of confusion is unfortunately quite widespread, affecting architects and developers, consultants and vendors alike”

ZapThink, of course, rode this Web Services wave, with our early reports on Web Services Technologies and Trends, XML & Web Services Security, Service-Oriented Management, and Testing Web Services. And yet, while we talked about architecture as early as our February 2002 XML and Web Services Unleashed book, we advised vendors in those early days not to talk about SOA, because the market wasn’t ready yet for the more complex, business-centric topic that SOA represented. Instead, the buzz centered on Web Services Architecture, which is basically a standards-based approach to integration.

Naturally, Jason also said that ZapThink recovered quite early

And yet, we realized back in 2002 one fundamental truth that is every bit as prophetic today as it was when we wrote our Service-Oriented Integration report in June of that year: that while Web services alone can reduce the cost of integration, only by moving to SOA can an organization reduce the long-term cost of business change. In other words, Web services get you the ticket to the ball, but you still have to learn to dance.

Read more at: InfoQ