SOA awareness up, but adoption slowing
SOA (service oriented architecture) adoption has slowed over the last year in the Asia-Pacific region, but adoption will continue steadily, according to Springboard Research.
"Awareness and understanding" of SOA among companies in the region has grown--a trend expected to ensure SOA's place within enterprises, the analyst company said in a recently released study.
"Enterprises across the Asia-Pacific region have indicated a higher state of readiness for adoption of SOA...organizations continue to adopt SOA-related IT best practices," said Springboard.
Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, senior market analyst, emerging software, Springboard, said an example of such best practices is standardizing IT infrastructure and middleware technology. Companies are also deploying Web services and possess a "strong awareness" of products and technologies "critical" to SOA deployment, Aggarwal added.
However, the survey noted many SOA planners have yet to deploy SOA, although "a majority" expects to increase investments in SOA next year.
According to Gartner's 2008 SOA User Survey, adoption in Europe is "nearly universal" at 70 percent, while Asia is "lagging" behind at 30 percent. Gartner estimates the worldwide average is 53 percent adoption among companies.
Gartner said two major reasons for organizations rejecting SOA are a lack of skills and not having a clear business case for SOA, leading to companies staying cautious and delaying plans till the next year.
Springboard's Michael Barnes, vice president of software research, said: “The adoption cycle for SOA in the Asia-Pacific region is going through the natural maturation process typical of most IT-related markets."
Barnes said SOA initiatives have seeped into organizations in less direct ways. "We find that SOA initiatives here are less a specific objective or design point and more of an approach that has quickly become an integral part of other IT projects, such as new application development, business process management, and application and data integration," he said.
Springboard's survey noted the biggest reasons for SOA adoption in the region are application integration and data integration, as well as reducing the time and cost of delivering new services.