In this article by Clive Longbottom , Head of Research Quocirca, published this week. He looks at the amount of knowledge transfer that's occurred to the rank-and-file IT guys pertaining to the benefits and the notion of SOA.

"Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are the subject de jour with IT vendors, who have been using the term as if the concept has been totally understood by the buying audience and is well along the way to general implementation.

However, research carried out by Quocirca on behalf of Oracle earlier this year shows a rather different picture. From a sample size of 1,500 respondents representing a mixture of technical and business people, more than 30 per cent said they have absolutely no knowledge of what SOA or service-oriented architecture means. More than 25 per cent more said they have minimal knowledge of it and only 20 per cent stated they have a fair understanding or a good working knowledge of what SOA is all about."

What was more disturbing was the response from the business players, typically the stakeholders.

"This split is even more pronounced when we just look at the business respondents—55 per cent said they have absolutely no idea what SOA is about and only 10 per cent said they have sufficient knowledge to understand what impact SOA would have on their business."

The article goes on to look at the responsibility for the lack of knowledge. They noted that the research shows the majority of people feel information coming from vendors is okay and that the respondents are happy with the information. However, the proper expectations don't seem to be widely understood.

"But if the basic understanding of SOA is so poor, is it that this 'consistent' information is just consistently misleading? Is it down to the analyst community overselling SOA as a concept and focusing far more on the technological impact, rather than the business impact? Is it the media, looking only for the day's headline, and neglecting the actual issues?"

While the author goes on to some obvious conclusions, all which jive with my experiences, it's clear that SOA, as a notion, has been hijacked by the vendors, and the vendors are doing a poor job in explaining the downsides as well as the upsides. In essence they are not depicting SOA in the "Real World." Moreover, they don't do a good job in explaining the organizations impacts; indeed many vendors are actually scaring the IT rank-and-file with talk of "system replacements" and "upgrading IT talent." In most organizations major change is not welcome, and many more savvy players see major spending and risk.

"Quocirca does believe that SOA is the future. Like many technologies and technological approaches before it, however, it runs the risk of being a golden goose killed before it has a real chance. Poor quality implementations, lack of suitable granularity in functional components, a lack of adequate understanding of what an SOA offers at a business level and the Wall Street pressures on application vendors to maintain revenues through selling tightly coupled application suites could result in perceptions that SOA just doesn't do what it says on the box."

That's the danger here. SOA is complex and hard, no matter how good the technology is that you toss at it. As soon as the end users understand that this is a journey, not a project, then the true benefits can be understood, and SOA will be what it really is...a way to optimize your business for success.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on October 6, 2006 05:10 AM