Silo: an over-hyped buzzword meaning all things inefficient and costly in non-interoperable software; a target to be conquered by Web services. Why, despite the hype and the passage of roughly three years time, has the promise of Web services not been delivered? And more importantly, will the promise of crumbling software silos ever be delivered?
Depending on where we look in the software stack, there are a variety of reasons (both internal and external to an organization) that have led to this broken promise. These range from limited best practices in services-based architectures to immature technologies and standards at points in the stack (such as workflow management). But the fundamental reasons that a wholesale migration to a services architecture has not occurred, stems from both the risk of moving from the current state and lack of cost justification.
IDC research indicates that organizations remain on the low end of the adoption curve for Web services. However, from this slow start, IDC sees growth rates in software and services markets related to Web services rising significantly through the forecast period out to 2008. Growth is occurring first in larger organizations, then spreading out into medium- and small-sized business markets. In particular, organizations within verticals, such as government and financial services, where a large legacy software installed base creates integration challenges, they are found to be further along with adoption than their peers in other industry verticals.
