In this recent ADT article, Kurt Mackie highlights some recent research into SOA, showing that we're still very early in the SOA game.

"A report from Research 2.0 describes the current use of service-oriented architecture (SOA) as experimental. The research firm's report of May 31, 2007 predicts that SOA will be embraced as mainstream technology by the year 2015. Packaged SOA applications will become market disruptors for companies such as Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.com, the report speculates."

So, it's 2007 and we have to wait until 2015 before SOA becomes "mainstream?" I don't think things will take that long; I do, however, think that SOA is a marathon not a sprint. Moreover, it is architecture not product, thus I don't think we'll see to many market disruptors that are products, albeit they will drive some architecture within many enterprises. I'm seeing that today with SAP. Indeed, many enterprises are creating SOAs that orbit around SAP. Not sure that's smart, by the way.

"Forester reported in a study that 21 percent of North American and European (NA-EU) enterprises said they'll adopt SOA in 2007. It also reported that 22 percent of Asia Pacific enterprises and 14 percent of NA-EU small-to-medium businesses plan to adopt SOA in 2007. However, the authors of the report, "Planned SOA Usage Grows Faster Than Actual SOA Usage," think that those figures may be optimistic because of results from an earlier survey. In 2006, 14 percent of NA-EU enterprises said they'd adopt SOA, but only two percent actually did."

I'm finding this as well. While the SOA expectations are high, there is a delta between what's being talked about and planned, and what's being implemented. I would say it's a 50 percent difference at this point. I'm sure this will change over time, but I've been finding that any relatively new concept, such as SOA, gets a lot of the "manage by magazine" crowd excited and talking. But, when implementing, they quickly understand that SOA is complex, risky, and takes a lot of smart people to get it right. I suspect that won't change for a while.

Keep running.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on June 19, 2007 05:53 AM