If you were listening to the webinar I gave a few days ago, you probably remember the phone system going haywire with feedback (don't worry, if you listen to the recording we're posting, this will have been edited out).
One of the topics I was talking about right at the time the feedback occurred was the "deer in the headlights" problem that IT faces when a business user tells them something is wrong with the applications since they often have no idea that a) that there is a problem, b) where the problem is, and c) what the problem is. If you remember my theme, it was that good visibility is the solution.
What you didn't get to hear was that, after the webinar was finished, we talked to the vendor that ran the webinar about the feedback problem. What was their answer? I quote, "We don't know where the problem is." They, of course, promised us they would have their quality assurance specialist look into it. And their answer was... "We're not sure what happened."
SOA What? Well, the moral of the story is that business service failures don't only occur with SOA infrastructure, but the same approach can be used to address them with SOA and without: visibility.