Asian businesses still hesitant on SOA adoption
Nearly half of businesses in the Asia-Pacific region have no plans to initiate service-oriented architecture (SOA) projects, though more can be done to persuade them otherwise, according to a new study by research analyst IDC.
More than 42 percent of the 680 businesses surveyed in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, indicated that they had no plans to embark on SOA projects within the next two years.
But it is not all bad news for SOA vendors, noted Patrick Chan, IDC's Asia-Pacific research director for emerging technologies IT services. According to Chan, businesses are now primarily concerned with reducing costs and improving profit margins.
"To drive SOA solutions in these organizations, vendors need to offer a 'right price with the right solution' approach in order to persuade these corporate end-users to include SOA in their future IT blueprint," he said. "Vendors should help these organizations with SOA-based solutions that not only aid in automation and identification of redundant business service workflow, but also in improving business processes that can significantly contribute toward the reduction of business costs."
The survey also determined that the top IT priorities of businesses centered on building and acquiring new applications to support business growth, Chan said, noting that this focus could help drive the adoption of SOA.
He added that organizations could potentially deploy SOA tools to extend their sales and partnering channels in a rapid and efficient manner, or to improve customer service standards by consolidating and improving workflow processes, services and communication at the back-end.
Vendors that introduce SOA concepts and educate their customers on SOA can also work on industry-specific business applications, using these as an entry point to bigger SOA projects, said Chan.
The IDC survey covered the following areas: IT and business priorities, SOA adoption plans and deployments, resources management issues, project objectives and challenges, and vendor selection criteria.
Vivian Yeo is a freelance IT writer.