"The times they are a-changin'," could easily have been written about IT in general and, right now, integration in particular. The SOA bandwagon is gathering momentum and new categories of product, foremost of which is the ESB, are promising to deliver the business agility, re-use and cost control that together comprise the holy grail of SOA integration.
But in striking contrast to this SOA euphoria, survey results are suggesting that SOA reality is not delivering -- or at least not delivering on a consistent basis. For instance, recent research from AMR revealed that 36 percent of organizations implementing SOA projects are having difficulty in re-configuring business processes. Given that this is typically the precise reason for adopting SOA in the first place, this is both a surprising and alarming result. Even more so when the same survey finds that only 13 percent of organizations not adopting SOA are experiencing the same difficulties.
