Enterprises are beginning to take steps away from SOA planning and prototyping and are now deploying SOA technology.
IBM found in their Impact 2008 survey of 300 enterprises that SOA deployments are increasing. About half of the companies surveyed said that they currently deploy SOA, and another 27 percent of companies are piloting it.
- 42 percent of companies identified SOA as their company’s top spending priority for 2008.
- 45 percent of customers are spending between 10 and 29 percent of their IT budgets on SOA.
- 60 percent of the companies said that their SOA projects spanned either the entire enterprise or an entire division of the company.
- 96 percent of the companies thought that their efforts with SOA were either “very successful” or “somewhat successful”.
The reason for the interest? Companies are saying that they are trying to develop an IT infrastructure that in the long haul brings them cost savings and a higher return on investment than technologies that they have invested in the past.
The focus on cost savings has turned SOA from being more of a technology-led initiative to one that is being led from the business side. In 2006 about 30 percent of SOA inititatives were business-centric. In 2007, that number increased to 70 percent. And interestingly, the top criteria now in selecting an SOA vendor is checking out the vendor’s understanding of their business. 32 percent said that their main focus area for SOA is now Business Process Management.
