Finally, Zapthink presents their own retrospective on 2008 and predictions, which start with:

[...] we will see at least one notable and well-publicized SOA failure and one notable and well-publicized SOA success. So that we can accurately determine if we successfully called this prediction at this time next year, let’s define our terms. By “notable and well-publicized”, we mean that the company in question will be featured in at least one major IT industry trade magazine and perhaps even a major international news daily. The success or failure will have significant business impact specifically attributable to the organization’s adoption of SOA. On the success side, it might mean specific revenue, product release, merger and acquisition opportunity, or reduced liability directly attributable to a particular SOA project. On the failure side, it would mean a large investment in SOA, whose “failure” (as determined by the company in question) resulted in loss of revenue, market share, opportunity, compliance, or other negative impact. Either way, we will acknowledge that by this time next year, there will be at least one undisputed success and one undisputed failure due to SOA.

For their next prediction Zapthink share a view on cloud computing and SOA that we have heard from others:

We have already started to hear more about cloud computing and anything cloud-related as the year drew to a close. We expect the din of the cloud-related chatter to turn into a real roar by this time next year. Everything SOA-related will probably be turned into something cloud-related by all the big vendors, and companies will desperately try to turn their SOA initiatives into cloud initiatives. Time will tell if this emphasis on cloud computing is a good thing for the future of SOA and IT, but we are hopeful that some of the themes that are emerging in cloud computing will borrow heavily from what was learned about SOA, and Service-oriented cloud computing initiatives become the rule in 2009, rather than the exception.

Read more at: InfoQ