The New SOA Opportunity

New customer research indicates that SOA adoption may be slower than expected. Vendors can capitalize by stepping up with expertise, governance and improved offerings.

By Bill McNee, Bruce Guptill and Mike West, Saugatuck Technology

Services-oriented architecture (SOA) is a far greater challenge than most companies realized when they began to adopt and deploy SOA. Rework, failed projects, and immature technologies have characterized many early user enterprise SOA deployments. Moreover, users often confuse such typical project benefits as application integration with the true, longer-term benefits of SOA, such as more responsive and agile application architectures and reuse of services.Ý

A core driver of these challenges is a lack of IT and SOA planning and governance among user business and IT management. The results for user enterprises include increased complexities and costs, and dramatically reduced SOA benefits. The results for vendors are too-often frustrated and disappointed customers.

In order to help deliver SOA success, todayís software companies need to accept the reality of current SOA deployments and capitalize on the opportunity to offer appropriate products, governance and expertise.

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