Survey: CIOs MIA on SOA

Is SOA rudderless? CIOs seem to be missing in action when it comes to getting involved in SOA. Only 18% of companies participating in a new survey, sponsored by Software AG, report their CIO's office plays a role in their SOA steering committee. This "may suggest that SOA isn’t viewed as strategically within IT as many have been led to believe," the report notes.

SOA, SOA, everywhere. But who's leading it? Who's paying for it?

Plus, this lack of CIO involvement "suggests that achieving SOA’s goal of improving IT’s alignment with the business may be difficult as the individual most responsible for this activity, the CIO, is not actively involved with their enterprise’s SOA initiatives."

Finally, this lack of engagement by IT’s “chief salesperson” to the business may explain the challenges that some users experience in making the business case for SOA."

In some recent posts on this blogsite (here and here), we talked about the need for visionary CIOs that can help business see the SOA light and get on board. However, the survey finds this hasn't happened yet.

Still, everyone seems to be getting into the SOA game. Software AG's survey covered 176 of its own customers, and found that 90% are in some stage of SOA adoption. This shouldn't so surprising, since 60% of the survey base consists of companies with $1 billion or more in revenues. But the lack of CIO involvement points to perhaps rudderless projects.

Now some good news. About 37% say the SOA implementation has met their expectations to date. Most, 54%, say it's "too early to tell." While this may be more based on opinions or perceptions than hard numbers, the fact that close to two out of five companies feel that their SOA is achieving some success isn't too shabby.

In fact, the survey also says companies seem to be adopting SOA for "all the right reasons" (such as improving business agility), and have the right attitude. "Most users view SOA governance as important and acknowledge their need for improvement. Meeting business objectives is seen as a key driver for adoption. They are also emphasizing the need for a holistic, lifecycle approach to SOA governance from the start."

But, there's more evidence of rudderless approaches. The survey also found that few, if any, companies have nailed down the right management structure to connect their SOA efforts with what's happening in the business. Only 35% say they have some form of SOA governance in place, and only seven percent would consider their governance as "mature," meaning it consists of a  "widely used registry/repository with automated governance processes."

Funding is another issue the survey tackled. The largest group, 34%, tapped their IT department budgets for SOA funding. Another 15% have set up a per-use fee, which could be construed as chargebacks. Only eight percent report they have a dedicated SOA funding source.

"Finally, only a small percentage of users are able so far to effectively chargeback for SOA-related development costs. This is an important concern for those hoping to justify their SOA initiatives on the basis of traditional return-on-investment valuations. On the plus side, most users are tracking their development costs. However, only a handful have reached the point in which they are “billing” for these services. This could reflect the relative lack of maturity in SOA adoption or the difficulty in creating a business case for SOA using traditional project methodologies."

Miko said the whole matter of funding gets to be a very interesting challenge, since "the initial establishment of ROI requires trust and alliances" with the business. Then there's the fact that "business Units don't necessarily want to own business services. They certainly don't want to work for another business unit! So who pays for changes? Does a business unit 'own' a service? What benefit would it be for them to share it?"

And what about reuse? Isn't that The report didn't address the subject of reuse head-on, and that's because it's such a loaded term with so many different meanings. In a recent interview, Software AG's Miko Matsumura elaborated on the meaning of 'reuse:'

"It is almost always easier to crank out new lines of code than to "reuse" anything. If you talk to someone in the business, it is hard to get them excited. They are more excited by increased agility and speed of development. They are more responsive to the idea of being able to connect chunks of functionality into business processes. The thing in common between business and developers is that both are a bit tired of how complex and slow the IT restrictions are around policies and processes. Neither one particularly responds well to the term 'governance' either!"

There is a group that appreciates reuse, however, Miko says:

"The only group that responds positively to the word is the finance function. They are excited about it because of the cost model--the concept of turning a recurring cost (IT) into a reusable asset is very appealing to them and they don't have the cynical experiences of the past. They just think... hmm this is obvious, let's do it."

Hmm. Maybe we should get the finance people to lead SOA? Now there's a concept.