Tuesday, 25 July 2006

Growth in SOA and Web-services Implementation

The awareness of Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) benefit as an IT enabler is now extensive. There is a growing and widespread acceptance of SOA technology, especially in large...

The awareness of Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) benefit as an IT enabler is now extensive. There is a growing and widespread acceptance of SOA technology, especially in large enterprises. Today at least 90 percent of the companies are on their way to adopting SOA, said Aberdeen Group in a recent survey.

SOA and web services are two different things, but web services are the preferred standards-based way to realise SOA.

According to Evans Data Corp.’s latest Web Services Development Survey, this year the percentage of functioning Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) has almost doubled.

Web services are software systems designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. This interoperability is gained through a set of XML-based open standards, such as WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI.

Of the four hundred managers and developers surveyed by Evans Data, twenty-four percent of respondents are saying they currently implement SOA, an 85 percent increase from last year.

Web Services are now also experiencing more comprehensive implementation. Thirty percent of respondents will be using more than 20-services in the next year, a 58 percent increase from now.

Twenty-five percent of respondents are saying the leading problem in implementation of web services are changing or lack of industry standards, a 67 percent increase from last year.

"While we are still at the beginning of this major software architecture shift, it is clear that the benefits of both SOA and Web Services are beginning to be realised", said John Andrews, President of Evan Data. "We envision that the SOA maturation cycle will take at least another five plus years."

Mark Koenig, author of the Saugatuck Research, said that still most companies are in the early proof stages of SOA adoption. Many firms are still at the planning or piloting stages of SOA deployment.

From the survey conducted through interviews, Saugatuck study found that the adoption of SOA is ‘modest’ at this point.

The study found that most firms deploying SOA are focused around two stages of either early stage planning or trial SOA deployment focused around legacy application integration.

The study said the key inhibitor to SOA adoption is funding the upfront investment required for enterprise-wide SOA deployment.