If you’ve been reading the industry press lately and worrying that your company is lagging dangerously behind the SOA bandwagon, you’ll be interested to hear that the hype is far ahead of actual implementations. A recent ebizQ SOA Governance survey of over 300 IT practitioners representing 21 different industries revealed that most companies were still in the early stages of SOA adoption (Chart 1). Fewer than 30% had deployed solutions in production. The rest were in the exploration, planning and pilot states of SOA adoption. While everyone seems to be talking about the benefits of SOA, actually implementing an SOA infrastructure is proving to be extremely challenging. Since this is not shrink-wrapped software, there are many different types of business initiatives that can drive SOA implementation, and there are a myriad of technologies and systems involved. Companies seem to be moving cautiously, and this is probably a good way to mitigate the risks.
