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The role of a service architect works the middle ground in the what we need now, where we are going, land of integration. In enterprise projects, the service architect works with all of product management, development management, functional business, UI design, service implementation, and middleware infrastructure. This is its own integration problem! A Service Design Methodology like the OSIDs is helpful for making sure it all comes together and lowers the risk a project will paint itself into a corner. The caveat is that the OSIDs will initially not speak to any of these parties and it will feel like throwing a monkey into the wrench. Over time, however, a project will more naturally align along service boundaries. It seems to do so because there is no other design methodology that crosses all the disciplines and can live beyond the latest design fad. Depending on the project, terminology alignment may be very difficult requiring the service architects to quarantine OSID terminology from some parts of the project.
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