Services are the building blocks of SOA, and like building blocks of a house or a building, the quality will define the value of the finished product. In this case, the SOA itself. Thus, spending...

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Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is gaining broad momentum throughout business applications that support all aspects of business operations, according to The Yankee Group 2005 U.S. Enterprise SOA Survey (see Figure 1). The survey of 306 IT executives representing a wide array of industries, including financial services, telecommunications, health service and government, revealed that SOA use is moving toward widespread implementation in only a matter of a few years in the U.S., regardless of vertical industry. SOA project completion in 2006 will accelerate and energize a rising tide of adoption of SOA across a diverse set of markets in a variety of business operations. This result illustrates that the respondents understand what is required to successfully leverage SOA. They recognize how important it is to understand this new paradigm and be prepared to change the way applications are architected.

Relevant Business Processes

When asked which types of business processes were most relevant for SOA, decision-makers reported they were focused on a swift ramp-up across the enterprise. Respondents identified customer-facing processes involving Web sites/portals as the most important followed by help-desk and customer support operations. Respondents identified improving better communication between different available services in the sales or customer service functions as most important because it directly affects the company’s revenue. They identified that using SOA to build exposed services can drive and offer unique or distinctive features, or a distinct image other companies do not have. Respondents also indicated that integration of business applications and improving access to business data and content were high priorities. Respondents reported that development of internal applications/reporting has been unified and leveraged across the enterprise - a recognized benefit of an SOA approach to integration. Interestingly, looking to next year, data content aggregation and accessibility, and business application integration are currently under evaluation or in the process of deployment. This result could indicate that SOA is ready to move beyond its customer-facing beachhead into more generalized use.

Business Architecture Challenges

Early adopters have begun to articulate the next issue facing them as they expand their use of SOA. A primary challenge is the need to define, design and specify a library of related enterprise services required to support the needs of the entire business. This big picture definition cannot proceed in a bottom-up fashion as prior SOA projects have.

Consequently, SOA requires IT organizations to change many aspects of their business: how they are organized, how they build and manage applications, the technologies they use and the products they purchase. How to leverage these is very critical during the whole SOA adoption process. During the first year of SOA adoption these questions may not have answers as companies approach SOA tactically without an overall architectural strategy.

However, as the definition of services expands, it becomes apparent that additional services should not be defined in isolation. Taking that approach increases the risk of building services that are brittle, redundant and not reusable. Instead, an SOA roadmap should be defined that creates a blueprint for investment and implementation spanning multiple years. Part of this roadmap is the specification of a complete library of enterprise services that support not only the entire enterprise operations but collaboration with the company's value chain. It is this effort that maximizes the 'A' in SOA.

Enterprise Recommendations

Vendor Recommendations

Clearly, the SOA train is starting to leave the station. It is time to get onboard.

Survey Methodology

Yankee Group used a Web-based survey to capture responses from 306 U.S. IT executives representing industries from financial services, government, telecommunications (wireline), telecommunications (wireless), retail, manufacturing, transportationl/logistics, medical/health services, travel/entertainment, and energy/utilities. The size of companies surveyed ranged from 250 employees to 5,000- plus employees. Eighty-six percent of the respondents had sole or joint decision-making responsibility for selection of SOA products and services. Forty-one percent of the respondents already have SOA partially deployed, while 43 percent plan to begin deploying SOA in the next 12 months, and the remaining 16 percent plan to begin deploying SOA in the next 24 months.

Tom Dwyer leads Yankee Group's Business Application and Application Infrastructure practice, which covers enterprise business applications, B2B, enterprise application integration, business process management and application development and deployment. Before becoming an industry analyst with Aberdeen Group, he spent 28 years in the computer industry in various engineering, marketing, professional services, and sales functions. Dwyer is the editorial director of BPMInstitute.org. He can be reached at tdwyer@bpminstitute.org.

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