What the data told us about service orientation and IT over the past year

For IT, 2010 was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. At least that's what the data told us. The past year was a year of growth, and a period of retrenchment. It was a time of greater SOA commitment, but also of questioning SOA approaches. It was a blending of cloud, virtualization, and data services.

Over the past year, we reported on a number of studies that explored the value proposition and growth (or lack of growth) for various aspects of information technology.  Here are some highlights.  Note how in some cases, the studies contradict each other:

SOA, cloud, virtualization transforming federal government. Input: Feds increase SOA-related spending about 17% a year, cloud spending 27%. Defense department is way out in front with SOA work.

Feds say they are modernizing mainframes; no clouds yet. Micro Focus: Three out of four federal IT managers in an informal survey say modernization is in their 2011 budget plans.

Lots of glum about enterprise apps, SOA. InformationWeek: IT professionals say enterprise applications are a bear to maintain. And SOA, BPM and cloud don’t seem to be offering much relief.

SOA middleware market will more than double by 2016.  WinterGreen Research: A lot of new growth in SOA-enabling middleware -- to $8.2 billion in 2016 -- will be fueled by the rise of cloud computing, which has re-energized interest in the SOA approach to life.

2009 wasn't such a bad year after all for middleware spending. Gartner: The global middleware market, which includes SOA and BPM solutions, grew up three percent last year to $15.9 billion — not bad in the middle of an economic hurricane.

SOA nine times more likely to be seen at 'outperforming' companies. IBM Institute for Business Value: Look underneath the hood of a successfully performing company, and chances are you will find a service oriented architecture approach to business technology.

Four out of ten moving to private clouds. Riverbed Technology: IT consolidations intensifying. New poll confirms the push is on to consolidate, consolidate, consolidate, with 43% of companies adopting private clouds.

CEOs really want to get closer to customers -- and IT can help. IBM global study of 1,500 CEOs finds 88% long for greater customer intimacy and less complexity top wish lists.

Seven out of ten very happy with SOA, plan expansions. Forrester: New survey of 900 companies expanding their SOA; only one to three percent have cut back on SOA.

SaaS is dead; long live services? Gartner: Software as a Service still doesn’t even equal one percent of enterprise IT spending.

SOA, flexible systems may help prevent another bank meltdown. Aite Group, Bradway Research: Two separate analyst reports conclude that there’s only so much more life that can be squeezed out of banks’ older legacy core systems, and it’s time to move on to more open, flexible architectures.

US IT spending growing even faster than we thought. Forrester: US IT spending will rise by 10 percent in 2010, up from original projection 8.4 percent just a few months earlier.

Shared IT services key strategy for cash-strapped local governments. National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), TechAmerica and Grant Thornton: A new survey of state CIOs finds greater interest in services, cloud, and other innovative responses to reduced IT budgets. Seventy-six percent are implementing shared services.

Very soon, a third of all software delivered via cloud. IDC: The Software as a Service market is growing by 25 percent a year. Many new investments are being steered toward Infrastructure and Platform as a Service.

Infrastructure as a Service now a bona fide cloud strategy. Yankee Group: More companies, 61%, are looking to tap into servers and storage as part of their clouds.

Increase enterprise data usability, save billions. Sybase, University of Texas and Indian School of Business: Make it slightly easier for business users to get quality data, and save billions in productivity.

ERP will stay on-premises for a long time to come. IFS North America: Many managers and executives don’t realize they may already have ‘private clouds' -- 22 % are doing it for their ERP systems.

IT budgets up; CIOs worry more about globalization. Society for Information Management: CIOs, CTOs and senior IT executives say their companies and departments are pulling out of the recent economic slump, but are concerned about their ability to help their businesses.

Information security both a management and technical challenge. Unisphere Research, Oracle, Deloitte: Two studies show only a minority of companies are watching the back doors of their data infrastructures — where break-ins can take place and remain undetected for a long time.

Want innovation? Look no further than IT, say CEOs. Olympus Corporation: Many of the innovations that companies are depending on to compete in a hyper-competitive global economy — analytics, e-business, automation, cloud, and yes, SOA — are all about IT.

Private cloud the choice of two out of five organizations. Unisphere Research, Information Today Inc., Oracle: A survey of 267 Oracle shops finds private cloud is already a working reality.

SOA plans 'ambitious' within financial services sector. Forrester: Eight out of ten financial services firms use SOA approaches today; most want to have a large chunk of their application portfolios service-enabled within the next two years.