SOA's 'decline' may be overstated, but companies still want results

Fred Cummins over at EDS looked at Gartner's recent downbeat survey (also reported here), which stated that fewer companies are launching SOA, and speculates that the economy may be putting the kibosh on new initiatives. The Gartner survey was conducted in early summer. "I suggest the primary driver was the declining economy, and that if another survey were to be conducted today, the decline in SOA adoption plans would be more severe."

SOA is here to stay, but needs more business-sense

By the way, in my own work with Evans Data, based on a survey conducted in September and October (when the financial crisis was hot and heavy), we that found all systems were still 'go' for SOA efforts -- but with plenty of continuing reservations about ROI. Fifty-two percent had SOA-based projects underway, and another 31% were planning to start SOA projects over the next 12 months. Gartner put it at 53% with SOA and 25% planning earlier in the summer. So, if anything, 78%-84% of organizations with or planning SOA seems more like saturation than anything else.

ZDNet colleague Dana Gartner also just spoke with IDC's Sandy Rogers, who finds in her polling that SOA adoption has deepened across many enterprises. "The issue is not necessarily deciding if they should go toward SOA. What we’re finding is that for most organizations this is the way that they are going to move, and the question is just navigating how to best do that for the best value and for better success," according to Sandy.

Nevertheless, Fred Cummins' advice on the direction SOA needs to take in light of economic stress makes plenty of sense. Target SOA-based projects at streamlining and efficiency. "The business imperative should be consolidation," he says. "That's what businesses do when they have to cut back. SOA should be viewed as the architecture for consolidation-for enabling economies of scale in capabilities that can be shared across lines of business. The design of these consolidated services should reflect a long-term, SOA strategy where shared services become fundamental to the design of the enterprise."

But, as analysts are suggesting, are organizations really feeling disillusioned about SOA, or is it simply too early to tell? Are there actually a lot of emerging success stories underneath the radar? If SOA is a tougher sell, what can SOA proponents do to increase enterprise acceptance? To answer these questions and more, I will be moderating a panel discussion as part of next week's SOA in Action virtual conference over at ebizQ. In a discussion on "Avoiding SOA Disillusionment," I will be joined by industry luminaries including Phil Wainewright (a familiar face here at ZDNet), Dr. Chris Harding (The Open Group), Jignesh Shah (Software AG), David Bressler (Progress Software), and John Michelsen (iTKO).

Issues to be tackled include SOA complexity, virtualization/availability of services, architecture approach, trust issues, organizational issues, and complementary approaches such as cloud computing and SaaS. I'll also raise Dan Woods' point that perhaps SOA shifts too much to already overworked IT departments.