The Service Ineffectual level occurs when an organization descends into a technological backwater where the IT enterprise delivers services as silo-based or bottom-up automation solutions under the pretense that it is adopting SOA. Services delivered during this level are generally not actual units of service-oriented logic. They are most likely single-purpose software programs labeled as services because they use a service technology (such as Web services, REST services, cloud-based services, etc.).

This level represents an IT initiative that, under the guise of “SOA”, is tactically focused without much regard for service-orientation or the steps necessary to attain the strategic target state associated with SOA and service-oriented computing. So many IT projects have fallen victim to this pitfall that it has tarnished the perception of “SOA” in general, leading to the need for the SOA Manifesto declared in 2009.