SOA analyst firm scores itself 100% for 2004 predictions, now looks to 2005
It's that time of year again, when analyst firms look back at their IT predictions and then congratulate themselves for getting it right or make no comment if they hadn't. Here is one good case of the former. Web services and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) expert Ronald Schmelzer talks up his firm, ZapThink, for what he says "batting 1000" on its SOA predictions for 2004. For instance, his company predicted that companies would move from mostly implementing SOA pilot projects to implementing and rolling out their first departmental projects--by all accounts they have. The firm also predicted that 2004 would be a do-or-die year for vendors, and that 2004 would be "the year of the SOA." Sure those things happened too, right? Though ZapThink has a great team of experienced and focused analysts (I point to them often), anyone looking closely at the market could have seen these trends coming. Not that there is anything wrong with being broad or vague, but they surely help with full proofing ideas about events yet to come. Anyway, here are the predictions for 2005, and I predict that ZapThink will retain its batting average:
- ;The WS-I Gets Going or Gets Out
The standards organization needs to earn more respect from vendors and implementers to be taken seriously: getting their act together to lock down profiles for security, process, and reliability can be a step in the right direction before the industry drowns in specifications that can't play together.
- Companies will Make More Money on SOA Services than on SOA Products
In 2005, revenue generated by Professional Service Organization start-ups might exceed and even dwarf that of all the SOA vendors in the market today.
- ESB: Use it or lose it
In 2005, the badly molested term ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) will either shift to a realistic, understandable, and meaningful meaning, or disappear from the SOA lexicon forever.