Yes, SOA reuse is a reality -- and here's where...

It's David Chappell vs. David Chappell. 

David Chappell of Sonic Software has just posted a case for reuse as a value driver for SOA, refuting the case David Chappell the industry consultant and .NET guru has been making against reuse. (Covered here in this blog.)

While Sonic David agrees with many of consultant David's points, including the fact that effective reuse of SOA services requires strong corporate wide organizational support with top management support and buy-in.

Sonic David compiled a list of reusable services he has seen used across his customer base, including "mediation services, on-ramps/off-ramps, business services, service patterns, and advanced mediation services."

For example, he writes, Proflowers has been able to cut their supply chain time from what is typically 12 days to three days by automating a time-based order system. David calls this example "the mother of all reuse" in that the flower supplier was also able to duplicate its success across three new sister companies that use the same time-based order processing systems - "Cherry Moon Farms for fresh fruit delivery, Uptown Prime for fresh beef delivery, and Secret Spoon Sweets for fresh sweets and confections."

David cites a number of other examples, such as a reusable consolidated payment service for an insurance provider, the HR service at a financial services company that enables employees to enter their own information into a database, and a unified customer view service at a call center operation.