Price Waterhouse Coopers has a thoughtful, and lengthy, whitepaper laying out their vision of a "Governance, Risk, and Compliance Operating Model" (it's consultant-speak; they can't help themselves) which actually embodies a belief I've held for awhile:  That we should take Sarbanes-Oxley and make lemonade. 

In other words, if a business has to re-evaluate its financial, accounting, and auditing plumbing from the ground up, why not take the opportunity to derive more business value from the exercise rather than succumb to the instinct that it's nothing but government-mandated pain?  I would wager that very few financial-reporting systems bear any resemblance to what one would create if starting with a clean sheet of paper.  SOX can be that clean sheet.