C’mon folks, we all know the old cliche… but trite or not it is still true.. you cannot tell if you are winning if you do not know the score.  Clearly the industry as a whole has a lot to learn about measurements and metering for services (Gartner clients, see Measuring the Value of SOA) but we have to at least try, because without some objective measurement it is difficult to argue for any investment, nor is it possible to constrain expectations, and we all know what happens when expectations outpace our ability to deliver.

While these conferences are certainly a great deal of work for the organizers like myself, they are also extremely rewarding, because of the opportunity to speak with a great many people in a short period of time. I encourage those of you who are coming to sign up for 1-1 sessions with the speakers, as they are often the most valuable part of the conference. 

I am also glad to see that we have chosen the correct lineup of subjects. SOA continues to be the top item of interest for the majority of attendees, and we have an excellent program that should give you both practical advice and a long term view of the evolution of SOA. This is not surprising, as our team’s inquiries from Gartner customers around SOA have grown this year as well.  I hope all of you that can are planning to attend this conference, and whether you do or do not, I welcome any suggestions for how we can improve the content. Please feel free to get in touch.

See you in Las Vegas

The first one  Six Design Patterns for Event-Processing Applications shows the logical design patterns used for different types of event driven systems, and should be helpful to practitioners who are designing and implementing such systems. The second note The Growing Impact of Commercial Complex-Event Processing Products explores the commercial offerings for complex event processing. These capabilities were once the real of esoteric systems such as program trading, but are increasingly being used by mainstream commercial enterprises to create highly responsive, situationally aware systems and processes. Finally, the third one Smart Devices and Sense-and-Respond Systems Are Event-Driven lays out the foundations of event driven systems, and how event driven models can interact and coexist with systems that process according to other models.

Interest in event driven capabilities is growing at an astonishing rate, and nearly all the designs we see for modern systems include some event driven capabilities. I would encourage anyone who is designing, building or integrating systems to take a look at this research, as it represents a major trend in the future of application design and architecture. 

This also implies that the economics of those activities will come into question. In many cases, companies have been willing to pay to outsource things based on a similar model to what would happen if the organization performed that activity in house. In a contingency model, we are likely to see more pressure, not only to make things variable and contingent, but base the contingency on measured outcomes. This effect will occur not only in IT but in areas where computing and the web model becomes more important. (e.g. Advertising)

If I can acquire things on a variable cost basis, that allows me to take more risks, since if the thing does not work out, I can wind down my relationship. Obviously, this may not happen overnight, but it is a lot less risky than acquiring the things myself, and owning them for the next decade or so.

I have to think that this will change many decision making parameters about IT. I would love to hear your view on what might change, or what is changing in your world.

However, there were quite a few warning signs as well. Nearly a quarter of organizations did not measure the value of SOA at all, and 40% did not measure ROI. It seems obvious when you say it, but as all organizations are under pressure to do with less, having no way of demonstrating value is likely to lead to budget cuts and project cancellations.

In the end, it was clear that for most, SOA was a positive step for the organization, and it improved efficiency and agility,and translated into cost savings over the lifecycle of the projects.

So the shocking truth is that similar concepts are being applied across different aspects of the IT industry, and the resulting systems can effectively combine those concepts to increase their leverage and value. This is all to the good. Of course, we all have a lot to learn about exactly how and what to do.. but as with all innovations, the chatter will start to die down as we all get our hands dirty implementing this in practice. It is this effect that has prompted some of the recent "death of SOA" discussions in the blogsphere, and no doubt will spawn the next great buzzword. (This is exactly what is predicted by the Hype Cycle, and documented in our Hype Cycle on Application Architecture)

In the meantime, we all need to focus on the key things that maximize the benefits of adopting those practices, designs and approaches. As I speak to Gartner’s clients about SOA, that is what they are all trying to achieve. I have no doubt that they will combine SOA with virtualization and other changes in the infrastructure to produce better, more flexible, less costly systems. The hype about SOA may be dying away, but the practice is just getting under way, and we have a great deal more to learn there. We have a lot of research about these practices going on right now… and at least for the moment, it will still be called SOA…although who knows..even I and my colleagues may succumb to "private cloud" or the buzzword de jure.. no one is immune, after all…

If anyone has good or bad experiences with this process of creating common message formats for SOA, please let me know, I would love to hear from you.

Also, if anyone is using industry standards as part of their message formats, I would love to talk to you as well.

A very happy holiday to all, and I look forward to speaking with you in the new year.