Almost half of SOA Projects are finished in 3 Months
As I noted in my last post, SOAs have a mixed reputation due to the usual hype cycle of any new technology, and not much can live up to the peek of the hype. SOAs are are no different than most disruptive initiatives because it promises more than it can deliver, it involves people and processes, and is not well understood by business stakeholders. However, SOAs are indeed making significant and impressive headway.Evans Data Corp. conducted a Web Services Development Survey in December and found that more than 40 percent of the 400 web developers surveyed say are able to complete a typical SOA development effort within 3 months, which is more than half the time of the percentage a year ago. Also, more than 60 percent of all SOA projects are finishing within 6 months. Those are impressive, especially considering that traditionally there is a rather high rate of failure among enterprise technology projects.
John Andres, President of Evans Data Corp. concluded “…we are now moving from the SOA pilot stage into full live deployments, taking advantage of the reuse of frameworks and services thus driving the much improved productivity curve,… This adoption highlights the proven benefits that both the IT and line of business organizations achieve through their SOA efforts.”
I get asked a lot about .NET vs. Java for SOA implementations, (SunGard, for example has a full native SOA stack for both, since we grow through acquisition and don’t normally have the luxury of selecting one over the other, we have to embrace both). I’ve said before in this blog roll that it shouldn’t matter. Evans Data postulates that organizations are adopting .NET and Java for SOA in nearly equal proportions. And, as for the growth, Evans Data estimates that by 2009, two out of three SOA developers will be running most of their applications in managed code. Additionally, half of developers working on Web services are currently using AJAX, or plan to do so, over the coming 12 months (AJAX is of course Java/.NET agnostic, it’s equally available from both technologies).
Some more findings I thought were interesting include the number of companies with 40 or more Web services in production has doubled over the last two years, which is expected to double again over the next 12 months.
I’ve argued in past postings that the most difficult (and most important) element of an SOA strategy is the organizational support and governance process that follows. The Evans findings cite likewise that most companies indicated the two biggest challenges are determining the ROI for SOA projects obtaining organizational buy-in.
Also, speaking of adoption rates and the whole governance and business management aspect of SOAs, there’s an interesting quote from Jim Eckenrode, Managing Director, Banking and Payments Practice, TowerGroup in Bank Systems & Technology article: “SOA exploration — ranging from “skunkworks” projects to formal architectural plan development — will continue in 2007 at large banks around the globe. Ultimately, SOA will sail (or flounder) based not on banks’ abilities to manage complex technology, but rather, success will be determined on issues of governance and business management.”