SOA's deep impact on software

SOA is the top trend in the software industry, according to attendees at SandHill.com's Enterprise 2005 conference earlier this month. Asked what technology will have the most impact on the software industry in the next 12 months, 30% picked Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs), 27% picked open source and 27% picked mobile technology.

Bruce Richardson, AMR Research's chief research officer, had this to say: "My SOA discussions seemed to segment into two parts: best-of-breed/early-adopter systems versus Oracle/SAP next-generation plans. Early adopters aren't waiting for the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) vendors. But how much of the market will they represent? My own view is that many buyers will be willing to wait for their backbone vendor even if the products/services won't be widely available for several more years."

Venture capitalists at the event were also bullish on SOA. "Web Services will have tremendous impact on software in the future," said Aneel Bhusri, Greylock Partners. "The push toward SOA is happening. It is actually being driven by CEOs that want to enable a business process or work with a partner quickly and the IT people know that SOA can make that happen. We need to see that play through to see what it will do to enterprise architecture."