ZapThink: Enterprises Not Buying Service-Oriented Architecture by Name; Consulting Firms Integrate SOA Best Practices with Business-Focused Offerings

BALTIMORE, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sept. 6, 2006–ZapThink released a report today showing that few enterprises are specifically budgeting for or requesting Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) by name. Instead, business buyers budget for specific solutions to their business problems, and more consulting firms than ever before leverage Service Orientation best practices to provide those solutions. The main buyer of such initiatives has shifted toward the non-technical, business part of the enterprise.

“The clear pattern with today’s SOA projects is that they are increasingly business-focused,” said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst with ZapThink. “Many consulting firms are integrating SOA best practices into a broad differentiated offering that is not necessarily specific to SOA.”

ZapThink expects the percentage of IT projects overall that leverage Service Orientation best practices to continue to grow over time, and those best practices will soon become ubiquitous. ZapThink also expects the percentage of IT projects that are named, SOA-specific projects to peak in 2007, with Service Orientation best practices increasingly subsumed within the expected, routine part of IT projects more broadly after that date.

Key findings of the report include:

• Breaking up a large SOA initiative into multiple, discrete projects is an effective way to manage the risk of architectural change.
• Integration-centric offerings and technologies are taking a back seat to organizations’ need to improve their overall approach to enterprise architecture.
• Many SOA consulting providers are confused by product vendors who often distort the true message of SOA to best fit their product offerings.
• Many SOA consulting firms confuse architecture with implementation, causing significant issues in short-term SOA adoption.
• Average deal sizes for SOA projects range from an average of $150,000 for integration-focused efforts to several million dollars for enterprisewide and compliance-focused initiatives.

The report, available on ZapThink’s Web site at www.zapthink.com, features several firms offering SOA consulting services, including Accenture (NYSE: ACN – News), AgilePath, Alphacourt, Anexinet, Arc Aspicio, Avanade, BEA Systems (NASDAQ: BEAS – News), BearingPoint (NYSE: BE – News), Bouvet, CapGemini (Paris), CherryRoad Technologies, City Practitioners, D. Callingham & Assoc., Daugherty Business Solutions, Definition 6, e-Brilliance, eSigma, gen-i, Geniant, Hitachi Consulting (NYSE: HIT – News), HP (NYSE: HPQ – News), IBM Global Services (NYSE: IBM – News), Infosys (NASDAQ: INFY – News), innoQ, IPT, Kanbay (NASDAQ: KBAY – News), Keane (NYSE: KEA – News), Lydian Technology, MITRE, Modhelus, Momentum SI, MphasiS, MW2 Consulting, Network Effects, Online Business Systems, PricewaterhouseCoopers, ProSolveIT, Satyam (NYSE: SAY – News), Schumacher Partners, Semantic Arts, SentientPoint, SilverTrain, SOA Software, SOA Systems, Software AG (Frankfurt), SRL Group, Statera, Summa Technologies, Synergy International, Systemiclogic, TasmanAve, TeamSOA, Tier1 Innovation, Voyant Group, Wipro (NYSE: WIT – News), WM-Data (Stockholm), and XWebServices. The report also mentions the following vendors: AmberPoint, Composite Software, Fiorano, Forum Systems, Infravio, LogicLibrary, Mercury (OTC: MERQ – News), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT – News), Mindreef, Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL – News), Reactivity, RedHat (NASDAQ: RHAT – News), SAP (NYSE: SAP – News), Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: SUNW – News), WSO2, and WebLayers.

Read more at: ZapThink Press Release

SOA Consulting: Current Market Trends

As the practice of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) matures, professional services firms that offer SOA-related services continue to lead the market in the creation and application of best practices for SOA. For this report, ZapThink surveyed 58 consulting firms who identified themselves as offering SOA consulting services in order to assemble a detailed, global picture of the state of the market for SOA consulting worldwide. ZapThink found a substantial maturation of SOA consulting offerings across the board, with an increased focus on the business value that SOA can provide. While there still remains some confusion over the nature and applicability of SOA, methodologies, engagements, and understanding of the SOA value proposition have all dramatically improved in the last few years to the point that SOA best practices are increasingly being taken for granted as the standard approaches for solving a broad range of business problems in organizations around the world.

Systinet SOA Webinar Series Addresses Governance, Policy and Lifecycle Management

Top Five SOA Governance Issues – ZapThink Hosted Event
Featuring Andrew Nash, CTO, Reactivity and Sean Kline, Director of
Product Marketing, Systinet
Date and Time: Thursday, December 1, 2005 at 1:00 p.m. ET

In this Webcast, ZapThink, Reactivity, and Systinet will discuss the
process to define and aggregate policies across infrastructures.
Attendees will learn of the options to create an SOA system of record
that centrally aggregates service characteristics as well as the
short- and long-term architecture requirements to enforce security,
routing and integration policies. Additionally, the presenters will
walk through the mechanism through which services, connections and
policies will be iterated.

Read more at: Systinet Press Release

What to Look For in a SOA Maturity Model

As companies move beyond the “what” and “why” of SOA to the “how,” they are looking for any tool or approach that will accelerate the adoption and lower the risk of their Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) implementations. In response to this need, several SOA Maturity Models have cropped up that aim …

Vendors Plan SOA ‘Maturity’ Model

But ZapThink analyst Ronald Schmelzer said that while best practices are definitely needed to make SOA work, “all these discreet, separate efforts are confusing end users. I suggest that these folks team up with the OASIS Reference Model and OASIS SOA Blueprints teams to coordinate their efforts and make something happen in a more cohesive way that reduces, not adds, to architect confusion around how to implement SOA best.”

Read more at: InternetNews

Report: Web services to alter consulting

The rise of Web services will force computer-services companies to dramatically scale back their systems-integration businesses and focus on other tasks, according to a research note released Thursday.
The note, from research firm ZapThink, says that with the appearance of more applications based on Web services–a programming method and set of standards specifically designed to link disparate systems–services companies will start shifting to tasks such as improving corporate business processes.

Read more at: CNet and BusinessWeek

Looking back on Web services in 2002

The year proved to be a pivotal one in terms of product development, says Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst of the ZapThink consulting group. “It was a big year for Web services,” he maintains. “It moved from being a bunch of specs to a bunch of products. The year before, there weren’t products –there were just proposals.”
In terms of standards, Schmelzer believes that the movement towards agreeing on security standards was key, because that is one of the major remaining roadblocks to the widespread deployment of Web services.

Read more at: TechTarget

Recruiting WS-I Members from Vertical Industries

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This paper seeks to explain why current WS-I members should recruit additional industry members, why industry members should join the WS-I, and what actions WS-I members should take to recruit new members. It should be a starting point for ideas about how you can help the WS-I grow and become more effective in achieving its goals.