Is there a 'there' there for SOA?

Quocirca's Clive Longbottom says its okay to be skeptical about service-oriented architecture.  But he also unveiled some stats from a study of experienced users that shows there is a 'there' there when it comes to SOA. 

Here's how he put it:  "SOA is the Big Thing of the moment – taking the last Big Thing of Web Services and moving towards the Next Big Thing of utility/grid computing....  But we’ve been here before, and as any crusty bearded, sandal-wearing IT elder will tell you, there is little new within the concept of SOA that couldn’t be done via re-usable code, callable routines, object orientation and the like a decade or two ago. So, is SOA the next Big Con (or even just one of many), or is there something tangible in it for today’s businesses?"

Quocirca surveyed 1,365 companies, and found less than one fifth of total respondents said they were currently active with SOA  About 476, however, were fairly knowledgeable and further along than the rest in SOAland. And 99% of this group said, yes, SOA has been a very good thing for them.  Areas where SOA was making a difference were in streamlining development and maintenance, reducing integration time and overhead, and generally enabling IT to help the business through better responsiveness.

"And consistency was high," Longbottom remarks. "Meaning that if SOA is really a dog, then the vendors have finally found the way of fooling all of the people all of the time."

There you have it.  SOA is out of the doghouse at last.