Accenture has released details of a new research facility and several new services designed to enable the company to better help firms implement Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) strategies.

Central to the consulting giant's $450m investment is the new Accenture Technology Lab for SOA Innovation in Chicago, which will allow the company to test the next generation of SOA applications customised for specific industries, explained European head of SOA practice at Accenture, David West.

Accenture defines SOA implementation in four distinct phases, starting with planning and organisation and tactical implementation and culminating in the fourth, industrialised stage, which involves reuse of modules and enterprise-wide deployment. But most firms today fall into the first two phases, with none having reached phase four yet, said Accenture.

"To reach that position of SOA nirvana is hard and a multi-year process," argued West. "In the labs we're assessing the tools likely to be commonplace tomorrow and see how close they can get us to level four and where the pitfalls are, so we can use that information to nip potential problems in the bud."

Accenture also announced new services to help firms currently "moving through their SOA journey", including the SOA Assessment and Roadmap, which features a set of web-based tools to support business case development and assess business readiness for moving to SOAs, added West.

SOA Organisation and Governance, meanwhile, is a set of tools which enables firms to assess how their organisation should evolve as SOA adoption grows.

"It [ensures they] know what they need to put in place to encourage the whole enterprise to reuse service, because if they don't they won't get the business benefits [from SOAs]," said West.