Gartner leaves SOA off 'Top 10 technology' list, but with good reason

Once again, for the second year in a row, "SOA" did not make Gartner's Top 10 list of compellingly strategic technology initiatives to watch in the upcoming year.

However, this is not a blatant oversight on Gartner's part. Rather, SOA is seen as a behind-the-scenes force that makes the compellingly strategic technology initiatives, well, so compellingly strategic.

In fact, ZDNet colleague Larry Dignan, on the scene at Gartner ITXpo, examines Gartner's latest Top-10 list of strategic technologies and comes to the conclusion that many will require service-oriented architecture. In particular, Larry mentions, business process modeling (No. 3), metadata management (No. 4), mashups and composite apps (No. 6) and Web platforms (No. 7) all add up to SOA down the road.

As Gartner analyst David Cearley put it in his Top-10 presentation: “SOA isn’t on the list because we are looking at some of the implementation technologies for service oriented architecture.” For instance, business process modeling (BPM) isn’t even a technology, but it’s a necessary precursor to introducing new technology. “SOA without BPM will not deliver on its process to the business,” says Cearley.

My thoughts on this: I think all the categories require SOA to some degree. Green IT (1), for example, is based on the ability to consolidate and operate more efficiently while consuming fewer resources. That's the crux of SOA, in which services can be built, tested, and maintained in a single place. Unified communications (2) depend on the ability to link communication and interactive channels to sharable applications. Social software (10) has SOA written all over it.