Survey: As SOA grows, so do issues
Okay, let's assume most companies are getting the SOA message. In fact, that seems to be the case, a new survey shows. But do companies have the right tools and platforms in place to make their SOAs a success? That remains to be seen.
Three-quarters of companies that have built or are building Web services now planning to implement SOA, according to the latest Evans Data survey on Web services and SOA implementations. At present, more than one in five have already built some kind of formal SOA for company-wide adoption.
The survey of 400 companies, for which I authored the final analysis report, confirms that most organizations are somewhere in the transitional stage between JBOWS stage (Just a Bunch of Web Services) and SOA. In fact, most have not gotten their arms around the various pieces needed to make up SOA: governance and registries, ESBs business process management, and service sharing/reuse.
The Evans Data survey shows there is some progress in this direction – a significant segment of companies now are building services that can be reused and redeployed. In fact, more than 70% have experienced a cost saving as a result of code reuse and automation of processes. However, the survey also shows that few companies are ready in terms of governance and management of cross-enterprise services. Testing and validating Web services is the greatest challenge for developing an SOA, along with determining an ROI.
The Evans Data survey also found that SOA is no longer just a luxury available to high-end companies – it’s reaching commodity status as technology available to the mass market of companies, including small to medium-size organizations. For the first time in this survey series (conducted since 2003), open-source tools surpassed commercial products in Web services and middleware development.
The survey also finds increasing reliance on frameworks to move SOA forward. How goes the battle between the Java Platform and Microsoft .NET frameworks?
The survey finds that number of companies planning or executing SOA deployments on a Java Platform increased slightly during the last six months while those planning to build SOA implementations on .NET decreased by almost 20%.
.NET deployments for SOA are still ahead, with 31% targeting that platform, but with 28% now expecting to target Java technologies; the rival platforms are virtually tied. Almost one in five companies are expecting to support both.