Survey: ESBs lag overall SOA adoption

Evans Data just released details of its Corporate Developers Survey, which measured the pace of SOA adoption among companies with more than 1,000 employees.

I authored the final survey report for Evans. Surprisingly, adoption of ESBs is trailing that of full SOAs -- I had expected ESBs to be more in the vanguard of SOA early deployments, and deployed well beyond existing SOAs. Currently, 15% of companies have ESBs in place. While that percentage that will more than double over the next two years, it lags overall SOA adoption, which will jump from 24% to 52% during that time.

Previous and related surveys in recent years also reflect an uncertainty around ESBs. Apparently, many companies are moving into SOA without ESBs to serve as intermediaries between various parts of the infrastructure.

About the photo: That's a model of the largest known "ESB" in the world -- even built using a "Lego-block" approach! 

Readers -- Is there an ESB in your plans?