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03.13.07
SOA Is SOL Without BPM
 By Rob Risany
Being in marketing, it's particularly fascinating how the perspectives of customers and vendors evolve on "the latest thing".
The SOA wars have been interesting to watch for exactly this reason. Integration vendors, pure-play BPM vendors and leading application platforms all have an SOA story. Education focuses attempt to teach people what SOA is and how it can make their infrastructures more "agile". And while attendance in these forums is still high, SOA is failing in many companies. .
Take, for example, a recent Forrester Research Survey that found that 38% of companies with more than 1,000 employees are not using SOA and have no plans to. Of the companies that are using SOA in some form or fashion, 40% haven't begun or are using SOA with no clear strategy in place.
Too add some color to these statistics, these vignettes illustrate the trouble in which SOA is finding itself:
• At a major industry conference an IT executive from a major bank was expounding on their success in migrating to an SOA in the business. He had SOAPs and WSDLs and fine grained web services - he had API wrappers, BPEL orchestration and data models. About 20 minutes into his exposition on the architectural approach that this 24 month project has taken, the attendee sitting next to me leaned over said "who cares about this anyway? Does this guy think business people CARE?!"
• I led a panel discussion - this one geared solely to an IT audience. I asked a question of the panel. "SOA - friend or foe of the business?" Every person on the panel, including one employed by a Fortune 50 company said "it should never be discussed with the business" - it needed to be neither seen nor heard.
• At another conference I sat in on a session where a successful SOA architect / project program leader laid out a few different options for deploying SOA. These included:
• Creating a global SOA strategy and push it into every bit of the business - force SOA everywhere, all at once.
• Implement SOA as part of each point project. He referred to it as the "bury approach" as it was designed to bury the costs of SOA implementation under the radar;
• Just "say you're doing SOA" and then ignore it altogether - the rationale being that most business people don't know what it is anyway. So long as you can say that "it's a priority" you sound like you're doing the right thing - then the pursuit of the status quo is at least given a veneer of "service-centricity"
All of these stories as well as the statistics make me cringe. SOA is yet another buzzword - separating the technology haves from the have-nots. A shift is already underway.
Is Gartner's classic "Trough of Disillusionment" permanent?
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
Rob Risany is Director of Product Marketing for Savvion, and is responsible for setting the direction and positioning of Savvion's products and services so that they meet customer requirements. Mr. Risany brings more than 10 years experience in software marketing including business process management, business intelligence, enterprise integration, and operational support systems. Prior to Savvion, Mr. Risany helped launch Orb Networks and AIM Technology in the United States, delivering marketing strategies and tactics which led to double-digit year-on-year growth for both companies. Mr. Risany holds a BS in Psychology and Communications from the University of Illinois.
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