Apple Computer’s television and Web-based commercials are simple and funny. You have the uptight, bumbling “PC” guy attempting to connect with the cool, laid-back “Mac” dude.

Perhaps those two are a fitting analogy for what we’re seeing in the SOA and Web 2.0 worlds. The “SOA” guy is the one in a corporate suit, a bit uptight, and prone to making things more complicated than they should be. The “Web 2.0″ guy, on the other hand, is the cool, good-looking one.

However, the PC and the Mac have far more in common these days than ever before, and even can communicate with each other effectively, at least through Internet protocols.

And, inevitably, the current chasm between service-oriented architecture and Web 2.0 will close to the point where the two will be indistinguishable drivers of this phenomenon we call “Enterprise 2.0.”

Here’s what SOA and Web 2.0 have in common:

SOA proponents can use Web 2.0 to open up channels of communication. SOA developers and deployers themselves are adopting Web 2.0 tools — blogs, wikis, collaborative Web-based services — to enhance and speed up their internal corporate efforts. For example, one huge problem vexing many SOA efforts is the array of architectural, integration and development teams scattered across the organization and not talking to each other. Through the use of internal blogs and wikis, these teams can better synch up their efforts and learn from each other.

Both approaches are about services and abstraction. The goals of both SOA and Web 2.0 are to deliver software as a service (internally or across the Web) that hides any underlying complexity from the end-user.

Another staple of Web 2.0 — application mashups — also bear a striking resemblance to the “composite applications” that are part of many SOA efforts. Both techniques involve the rapid development and deployment of new applications that pull data from multiple sources from across a network. Google Maps-based services essentially do the same thing as a middleware-based customer-service application pulling in data from multiple mainframes within an enterprise.

Here’s how SOA and Web 2.0 are different:

SOA is about enterprise efficiency. Web 2.0 is about individual empowerment. The goals of the two approaches are markedly different. But the forces of transformation that have swept enterprises in recent decades have always had their roots in individual empowerment, which companies adopt to their advantage. Think PCs, think Internet, think self-service. The Web 2.0 wave is following a similar trajectory.

For Web 2.0 projects, the operative term is ‘just do it.’ For SOA, build a business case first. Web 2.0 technologies can be quickly adopted with minimal disruption to current operations. SOA projects mean breaking down business applications, after getting buy-in from affected end-users of the applications from across the enterprise.

As SOA and Web 2.0 converge into Enterprise 2.0, we’ll see the best of both worlds emerging — the discipline and enterprise focus of SOA, enhanced by the flexibility and entrepreneurial spirit of Web 2.0. That’s a “mashup” we all look forward to.