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STKI Summit – SOA Perspective: Same Old Architecture or Same Old Mistakes? – Part 1

On March 24th I participated in the STKI Summit by the local analysts company STKI.
The company headed by Dr. Jimmy Schwartzkopf is focused on the Israeli market. The theme of this year conference was: Back to Basics.

Presentations were based on an Israeli market survey performed by the company.
The company's analysts' presentations topics were Infrastructure Trends, Applications Trends, Office of the CIO trends and Infrastructure Services Trends, followed by wrap up IT Trends presentation by Jimmy.

The survey may not be accurate but the information is valuable and probably reflects the overall market status.

A less accurate on the spot survey results were presented afterwards.
The following bullets highlights SOA perspective as it was presented:

  • Disappointments from SOA implementations results
  • SOA implementations are lagging behind expectations: It takes longer time than expected and consumes more resources.

  • Benefits form SOA projects include better and faster integration, Faster changes to production, Better day to day operations and migration from Legacy products.
  • On the spot survey results: 48% - No SOA initiative, 22% - SOA benefits are in IT budget savings, 28% - SOA benefits are in Agility
  • Development, SOA and Middleware Radar in which SOA implementation is in the interest circles. SOA technology Selection, SOA Governance initiative and SOA Road map projects are in the Implementing phase and no SOA aspects in the more mature circles titled Using ( EAI, Java and .Net are in the Using phase).
  • Quantitative results such as number of services or interface and a list of installations of SOA/EAI/Messaging/Development tools.

My Take:

  • I am not able to interpret the quantitative results because SOA and non-SOA are intermixed (I assume that both users and vendors label Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) implementations as SOA). Separation is needed for analyzing SOA Infrastructure Trends.
  • Separating SOA from non- SOA in a survey is difficult (see my previous Post SOA and SCS). If it can be done I would add another quantitative question: What is the Service Reuse Ratio?
  • Is it disappointment or disillusionment? I do think that SOA if implemented correctly is not the acronym Same Old Architecture. However, repeating the same IT mistakes will create the Same Old Architecture and not SOA. SOA should not be an IT only initiative, but a joint Business and IT initiative.
  • Expectations of Enterprises hiring external experienced and knowledgeable SOA consultants would be more realistic. The significant difference between these enterprises and others will probably not be in deviation from expectations but in actual measurable results.

My next post will analyze the survey results in comparison to other surveys.

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