While there is agreement that organizations need guidance in implementing an SOA, what a maturity model should include and who should be driving it —vendors, consultants or independent third-party organizations—is where opinions diverge.
Since SOA is about the approach to the development of systems, it has many similarities with object orientation, component-based development and general software development practices, "all of which had supporting maturity models," said Sam Higgins, a senior analyst with Forrester Research Inc. who is based in Australia. "It would not be unreasonable for SOA maturity models to merely be additional perspectives on existing maturity models. Many of the vendors we have spoken to indicated that they based their thinking on these existing models."
