One end-user's perspective: 'vendors don't get SOA'

Like them or not, we look to vendors for guidance on SOA.  

ZDNet's Steven Deare reports that the IT head of one large financial services firm says that despite  pronouncements to the contrary, vendors don't seem to get -- or maybe just don't want to get -- SOA.

ING, which is three years into its services transformation strategy to integrate the systems of 20 companies it had acquired during this time, has been disappointed by lack of understanding from vendors, and their continued insistence on pushing their own proprietary software.

Vendors continue to push their own systems that will quickly become legacy, according to Shannon Murphy, regional head of IT applications and architecture for ING Insurance AsiaPacific. For example, Murphy said, vendors are using business process management as a sales pitch for another system. "If you buy a system to do process, you'll end up with a system that does process and in about five years you'll have the new legacy. In fact I've seen systems that the moment you put them in place they're legacy."

It's interesting that BPM is being promoted so heavily now. As I noted in my last post, the large infrastructure vendors are coming up woefully short in the BPM category.