Dan Sholler

One of the most interesting research projects that I have been working on this year has been our ongoing SOA user survey (Gartner subscribers only).   Last week a summary of some of the interesting findings was sent out , and it has gotten some exposure (a search string). I am glad of that, because it has been quite a lot of work, but has thrown up a number of very interesting results. Much of the coverage has been focused in two areas:

1) There are leading signs that the adoption of SOA as a practice within organizations will slow next year. The proportion of organizations saying that they were planning to adopt SOA designs in the next 12 months declined, and the proportion saying that they had no plans to do so grew. This does not mean that organizations are abandoning SOA, but it does mean that an increasing number of those who have not done anything about it yet are not going to do so in the next year. This may partly be a result of saturation, but it is also probably related to the expectations of flat or shrinking budgets in a down economy, and the fact that many organizations have other fish to fry.  Extensive analysis of these trends can be found (for Gartner subscribers) in the 2008 SOA User Survey: Adoption Trends and Characteristics note.

2) Another thing that is evident in that note is the worldwide distribution of the use of SOA. We found that European countries (Mainly UK, France, and Germany) were the furthest along in the adoption of SOA, while Asian countries (mainly India, China, and Australia) had much lower rates of adoption. Again, there are a number of factors here, but it seems clear that this imbalance is likely to remain for some time.

Just last week we published the 2008 SOA User Survey: Justification (Gartner subscribers only) research, which shows how organizations are justifying the organizational changes and investments needed to implement SOA. Among the results was a clear indication that the formal justifications that people use (which were often cost based) and the informal expectations of return (which were based on values such as agility measures) were not aligned. Part of the challenge with SOA may stem from the fact that expectations set at the time people justify their investments may be in conflict with the actual goals they are using SOA to accomplish.

This research is an ongoing project. I am currently working on an analysis of value capture from SOA based on the survey data. I will be presenting all of these results at our upcoming Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit taking place December 8-10, in Las Vegas, NV. Please come, and if you do attend, it would be terrific if you could spend some time participating in the SOA survey. There will be survey kiosks at the event in the Gartner Realtime Research Center. Please come and visit, and I hope to see you there.

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