Will Asia leapfrog America?

It may be too soon to tell, but there are some signs that Asia will implement SOA more rapidly than America will. As Actional CEO Tom Ryan told us this week, "We are seeing a growing increase in activity and acquisition and implementations of SOA in the Asia-Pacific -- almost outpacing what's going on here in the U.S. in some ways."

Actional, a provider of SOA enablement solutions, has landed clients in Hong Kong (see previous piece), Singapore, Australia and expects to announce an array of others in the coming year.

This trend doesnt seem to fit the usual enterprise technology adoption pattern where Asia lags the U.S. by as much as 18-24 months (and EMEA lags by 12-18 months). That may be related to Asia not embracing enterprise application integration (EAI).

Ryan thinks that companies in the U.S. are still trying to generate a meaningful return on their heavy EAI middleware investments and are reluctant to abandon it if it means losing face. "What we are finding is that because Asia-Pac didn't really embrace EAI, they are actually better positioned to leap frog that technology and take advantage of SOA," contends Ryan.

Its a lot like the rapid uptake of wireless technologies in regions such as Asia and Eastern Europe where wireline technology was not deeply established. "I think we are seeing some of those same dynamics exhibit themselves in SOA," says Ryan. "It's pretty interesting and it has kind of changed our business perspective. Where normally we would wait to build out those regions and scale those regions relative to what we are doing in the U.S., we are actually going to change our approach and probably look for a growing amount of business happening outside of the U.S."