It’s a popular misconception that if you throw some SOAP, WCF, or J2EE service layers on top of an application, it’s automatically easy to integrate. I place the blame for this misinformation squarely on PHB‘s and Gartner conferences, because this is simply a case of management by buzzwords.
A good friend of mine used to tell me all the time that the reason we’re entertained by a dancing bear isn’t that the bear dances well – it’s that the bear dances at all.