Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are gaining popularity as an approach to provide flexibility and agility, not just in systems development but also in business process management. Studies of the practical business impacts of SOA are crucial as the number of SOA implementations grows, and are required for a better critical understanding of this popular architectural concept that is being rapidly adopted by industry organizations. Although there is a significant amount of ongoing research related to technology implementations of SOAs, there is a paucity of research literature on the factors affecting the adoption of service-oriented computing and the realization of business value in practice. This paper empirically examines the adoption of service-oriented computing (SOC) as an enterprise strategy across fifteen firms, and discusses the organizational constraints that influence the enterprise adoption and implementation of SOA. In doing so, this paper fills a crucial gap in the academic literature about the practical use of SOA as an enterprise strategy for agility, and lays the groundwork for future work on SOA alignment with organizational strategy. The paper also provides practitioners with guidelines for the successful implementation of SOA to achieve business value.