During the first week of November, InfoWorld held an SOA Executive Forum in New York. From our perspective, the true value of the forum came from the enterprise SOA practitioner presentations. Individuals from Merrill Lynch, Verizon, Sprint-Nextel, Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, The Hartford, Ohio State University Medical Center, SABRE, Pfizer, the U.S. Army, and the District of Columbia shared their SOA stories. Each story included the business or IT problem being solved, SOA benefits, the keys to success, and the lessons learned. In this report, we present the most important takeaways from these real-world SOA practitioners.