Getting value out of SOA

SOA Articles : Getting value out of SOA by Sandy Cosser

According to Wikipedia, SOA (Service-orientated architecture) can be defined as "a group of services that communicate with each other". SOA is designed to offer simple service solutions to save people and machines a great deal of time. Research firm, Gartner has been studying the adoption of SOA around the world and for 4 years they found that SOA was on the rise. Now, for the first time in 5 years, adoption figures have dropped. Last year's survey revealed that 53% of organisations planned to adopt SOA for the first time, this year that figure was down to 25%.
More bad news for SOA is that companies that have no intention of adopting SOA rose from 7% in 2007 to 16% in 2008. In Paul Krill's article on Infoworld.com, Dan Sholler, Gartner research vice-president, states that there are two major reasons behind SOA's sudden drop in popularity: lack of skills and expertise and no viable business case. Companies also no longer see SOA as essential to their future, but have relegated it to the 'luxury' pile where many IT services find themselves in a recession.

But according to Dave Linthicum, also from Infoworld.com, dropping 'luxuries' such as SOA is an unhealthy reactionary approach and can cost companies more money in the long-run. Linthicum cites Miko Matsumura when he says that companies shouldn't ask whether they can afford SOA now, but rather whether they can afford to miss out on a 5x return in three years.

Linthicum also notes that SOA adoption is widespread in Europe, where he says companies are more forward thinking and future-orientated than companies in the US, who tend to focus on the here and now, as he says the next four months as opposed to the next four years.

Linthicum believes that SOA as a concept has been around a lot longer than many people think, only under a different name. And he contends that the concept of SOA will be here long into the future, although further name changes are likely. He points out that names are unimportant, so long as people continue to buy into the core value of the concept and keep the momentum going, that's what counts.

References:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/03/SOA_growth_projections_shrinking_1.html http://weblog.infoworld.com/realworldsoa/archives/2008/11/asoa_is_inevita_1.html http://weblog.infoworld.com/realworldsoa/archives/2008/11/soa_is_shrinkin.html

About the Author
Sandra wrote this article for the online marketers DTI Data data salvage and recovery one of the most experienced and expert providers of data recovery services in the UK

Source: SOA Service Oriented Architecture information at goarticles.com