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

admin — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 00:09:00 +0000

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.

SOA Consulting: Current Market Trends

Jason Bloomberg — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 00:09:00 +0000

Market Overview

Few enterprises are buying SOA by name. Instead, business buyers are paying for solutions to business problems, and more consulting firms than ever before are leveraging 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. Many consulting firms integrate SOA best practices into a broad differentiated offering that is not necessarily specific to SOA.
Many ostensible SOA efforts are little more than middleware shell games. Product vendors often distort the true message of SOA to best fit their product offerings. Similarly, the core mistake that some consulting firms are making is in confusing architecture with implementation.

Future Trends

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 expects the percentage of IT projects that are named SOA projects to reach a maximum in the 2007 timeframe, and then gradually decrease as Service Orientation best practices become an expected, routine part of IT projects more broadly.

Table of Contents

SOA Consulting: The State of the Market
1. Scope of Report
2. Methodology
3. Survey Participants and Demographics
SOA-Related Service Offerings
1. Context for SOA within Differentiated Offerings
2. SOA Expertise
3. Challenges in SOA Consulting
4. SOA Methodologies
5. Typical SOA Engagements
Enterprise Buyers and Solution Partners for SOA Consulting Firms
1. Who Buys SOA Consulting?
2. Current State of SOA Consulting Engagements
3. The SOA Consulting Partner Landscape
Trends in SOA Consulting
1. Business Focus for SOA
2. Growth and Trends of SOA Project Engagements
3. Maturation of SOA Best Practices
4. SOA Substance vs. SOA Hype
The ZapThink Take
1. Key Notes
2. Decision Points
3. Figures
4. Tables

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Geniant’s Chip Wilson Introduces First Business Book on SOA

admin — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 00:09:00 +0000

“Chip Wilson has written a book that finally places Service Oriented Architecture in the appropriate business context. Transparent IT ties together IT integration and infrastructure issues with a strategic look at SOA. Any business reader with an interest in enterprise IT will come away with a better understanding of what it takes to create an SOA that provides the critical business agility that companies require today,” said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink LLC.

Service-Oriented Architecture Consulting for Enterprise End-Users

Jason Bloomberg — Thu, 22 May 2003 00:05:00 +0000

Key Findings:

Today’s professional services firms are struggling to find their long-term value proposition in environments that are in constant change. There is a significant opportunity for PSOs in the short-term for helping companies implement and adopt SOAs, and in the long-term for providing critical business process expertise.
As Service-oriented process tools mature, system integration will no longer be a separate activity, but will be subsumed into the process orchestration and choreography activities within the Service-oriented process tools.
The business process design, optimization, and execution consulting market will come to displace the system integration market.
System integrators will find the low-level integration work diminishing as their customers adopt SOAs, and therefore will need to transition their skills to the Service-oriented process arena to avoid having their market erode substantially.
There is a significant opportunity for consulting firms in the next five years for helping companies implement and adopt SOAs, and in the long-term for providing critical business process expertise.
Total SOA architectural and process consulting revenues will surpass those from system integration by 2006.
System integration revenue by professional services organizations will decrease by over 70% by 2010, while Service-Oriented Business Process consulting will increase 20-fold in the same time period.

Table of Contents:

I. Report Scope
I. The Context for SOA Consulting
- 1.1. The Difference between Web Service and SOA engagements
- 1.2. SOA Practice Contexts
- 1.3. Meeting Customer Needs
- 1.4. Raising the Perception of Architecture
II. Conducting an SOA Engagement
- 2.1. Selling an SOA Engagement
- 2.2. Getting a Foot in the Door
- 2.3. Aspects of SOA Engagements
- 2.4. Technology Selection Considerations
III. Adopting an SOA
- 3.1. Justifying an SOA Engagement
- 3.2. SOA Enterprise Adoption Roadmap
- 3.3. Managing an SOA Engagement
IV. Market Trends. Opportunities and Risks
- 4.1. Compensation for the Standards Gap
- 4.2. Long-term Shifts in Demand
- 4.3. SOAs as the Key to the Real Time/On Demand Enterprise
V. Conclusions
- 5.1. Key Notes
- 5.2. Decision Points
- 5.3. Figures
- 5.4. Tables
VI. Profiled Professional Services Organizations
- 6.1. Small Architectural Consulting Firms
- 6.2. Small IT Consulting Firms
- 6.3. Midsize IT Consulting Firms
- 6.4. Large IT Consulting Firms
- 6.5. Small/Midsize Full-Service PSOs
- 6.6. Large Full-Service PSOs
- 6.7. Software Vendors

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Service-Oriented Architecture Consulting Partnership Landscape

Jason Bloomberg — Thu, 22 May 2003 00:05:00 +0000

Key Findings:

Today’s professional services firms are struggling to find their long-term value proposition in environments that are in constant change. There is a significant opportunity for PSOs in the short-term for helping companies implement and adopt SOAs, and in the long-term for providing critical business process expertise.
As Service-oriented process tools mature, system integration will no longer be a separate activity, but will be subsumed into the process orchestration and choreography activities within the Service-oriented process tools.
The business process design, optimization, and execution consulting market will come to displace the system integration market.
System integrators will find the low-level integration work diminishing as their customers adopt SOAs, and therefore will need to transition their skills to the Service-oriented process arena to avoid having their market erode substantially.
There is a significant opportunity for consulting firms in the next five years for helping companies implement and adopt SOAs, and in the long-term for providing critical business process expertise.
Total SOA architectural and process consulting revenues will surpass those from system integration by 2006.
System integration revenue by professional services organizations will decrease by over 70% by 2010, while Service-Oriented Business Process consulting will increase 20-fold in the same time period.

Table of Contents:

I. Report Scope
I. The Context for SOA Consulting
- 1.1. The Difference between Web Service and SOA engagements
- 1.2. SOA Practice Contexts
- 1.3. Meeting Customer Needs
- 1.4. Raising the Perception of Architecture
II. Partnering with a Professional Services Organization
- 2.1. Partnership Value Proposition
- 2.2. Partnership Landscape
III. Current State of the Market
- 3.1. Market Segmentation
- 3.2. Adoption Picture
- 3.3. Examples of SOA Engagements
IV. Market Trends. Opportunities and Risks
- 4.1. Compensation for the Standards Gap
- 4.2. Long-term Shifts in Demand
- 4.3. SOAs as the Key to the Real Time/On Demand Enterprise
V. Conclusions
- 5.1. Key Notes
- 5.2. Decision Points
- 5.3. Figures
- 5.4. Tables
VI. Profiled Professional Services Organizations
- 6.1. Small Architectural Consulting Firms
- 6.2. Small IT Consulting Firms
- 6.3. Midsize IT Consulting Firms
- 6.4. Large IT Consulting Firms
- 6.5. Small/Midsize Full-Service PSOs
- 6.6. Large Full-Service PSOs
- 6.7. Software Vendors

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Service-Oriented Architecture Consulting

Jason Bloomberg — Thu, 22 May 2003 00:05:00 +0000

Key Findings:

Today’s professional services firms are struggling to find their long-term value proposition in environments that are in constant change. There is a significant opportunity for PSOs in the short-term for helping companies implement and adopt SOAs, and in the long-term for providing critical business process expertise.
As Service-oriented process tools mature, system integration will no longer be a separate activity, but will be subsumed into the process orchestration and choreography activities within the Service-oriented process tools.
The business process design, optimization, and execution consulting market will come to displace the system integration market.
System integrators will find the low-level integration work diminishing as their customers adopt SOAs, and therefore will need to transition their skills to the Service-oriented process arena to avoid having their market erode substantially.
There is a significant opportunity for consulting firms in the next five years for helping companies implement and adopt SOAs, and in the long-term for providing critical business process expertise.
Total SOA architectural and process consulting revenues will surpass those from system integration by 2006.
System integration revenue by professional services organizations will decrease by over 70% by 2010, while Service-Oriented Business Process consulting will increase 20-fold in the same time period.

Table of Contents:

I. Report Scope
- 1.1. Methodology
II. The Context for SOA Consulting
- 2.1. The Difference between Web Service and SOA engagements
- 2.2. SOA Practice Contexts
- 2.3. Meeting Customer Needs
- 2.4. Raising the Perception of Architecture
III. Conducting an SOA Engagement
- 3.1. Selling an SOA Engagement
- 3.2. Getting a Foot in the Door
- 3.3. Aspects of SOA Engagements
- 3.4. Technology Selection Considerations
IV. Adopting an SOA
- 4.1. Justifying an SOA Engagement
- 4.2. SOA Enterprise Adoption Roadmap
- 4.3. Managing an SOA Engagement
V. Partnering with a Professional Services Organization
- 5.1. Partnership Value Proposition
- 5.2. Partnership Landscape
VI. Current State of the Market
- 6.1. Market Segmentation
- 6.2. Adoption Picture
- 6.3. Examples of SOA Engagements
VII. Market Trends. Opportunities and Risks
- 7.1. Compensation for the Standards Gap
- 7.2. Long-term Shifts in Demand
- 7.3. SOAs as the Key to the Real Time/On Demand Enterprise
VIII. Conclusions
- 8.1. Key Notes
- 8.2. Decision Points
- 8.3. Figures
- 8.4. Tables
IX. Profiled Professional Services Organizations
- 9.1. Small Architectural Consulting Firms
- 9.2. Small IT Consulting Firms
- 9.3. Midsize IT Consulting Firms
- 9.4. Large IT Consulting Firms
- 9.5. Small/Midsize Full-Service PSOs
- 9.6. Large Full-Service PSOs
- 9.7. Software Vendors

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Service-Oriented Architecture Consulting for Professional Services Organizations

Jason Bloomberg — Thu, 22 May 2003 00:05:00 +0000

Key Findings:

Today’s professional services firms are struggling to find their long-term value proposition in environments that are in constant change. There is a significant opportunity for PSOs in the short-term for helping companies implement and adopt SOAs, and in the long-term for providing critical business process expertise.
As Service-oriented process tools mature, system integration will no longer be a separate activity, but will be subsumed into the process orchestration and choreography activities within the Service-oriented process tools.
The business process design, optimization, and execution consulting market will come to displace the system integration market.
System integrators will find the low-level integration work diminishing as their customers adopt SOAs, and therefore will need to transition their skills to the Service-oriented process arena to avoid having their market erode substantially.
There is a significant opportunity for consulting firms in the next five years for helping companies implement and adopt SOAs, and in the long-term for providing critical business process expertise.
Total SOA architectural and process consulting revenues will surpass those from system integration by 2006.
System integration revenue by professional services organizations will decrease by over 70% by 2010, while Service-Oriented Business Process consulting will increase 20-fold in the same time period.

Table of Contents:

I. Report Scope
I. The Context for SOA Consulting
- 1.1. The Difference between Web Service and SOA engagements
- 1.2. SOA Practice Contexts
- 1.3. Meeting Customer Needs
- 1.4. Raising the Perception of Architecture
II. Conducting an SOA Engagement
- 2.1. Selling an SOA Engagement
- 2.2. Getting a Foot in the Door
- 2.3. Aspects of SOA Engagements
- 2.4. Technology Selection Considerations
III. Current State of the Market
- 3.1. Market Segmentation
- 3.2. Adoption Picture
- 3.3. Examples of SOA Engagements
IV. Market Trends. Opportunities and Risks
- 4.1. Compensation for the Standards Gap
- 4.2. Long-term Shifts in Demand
- 4.3. SOAs as the Key to the Real Time/On Demand Enterprise
V. Conclusions
- 5.1. Key Notes
- 5.2. Decision Points
- 5.3. Figures
- 5.4. Tables
VI. Profiled Professional Services Organizations
- 6.1. Small Architectural Consulting Firms
- 6.2. Small IT Consulting Firms
- 6.3. Midsize IT Consulting Firms
- 6.4. Large IT Consulting Firms
- 6.5. Small/Midsize Full-Service PSOs
- 6.6. Large Full-Service PSOs
- 6.7. Software Vendors

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ZapNote: Geniant

Jason Bloomberg — Thu, 22 May 2003 00:05:00 +0000

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Service-Oriented Process

Ronald Schmelzer — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 00:04:00 +0000

Key Findings:

Service-Oriented Process is Key to Meeting Business Agility Requirements
Service-oriented process includes orchestration, choreography, composition, workflow, transactions, and collaboration of Web Services.
The market for Service-Oriented Process solutions will grow from $120 Million in 2003 to over $8.3 Billion by 2008.
The standards landscape will converge on a single choreography, orchestration, and process flow specification in the next 12-18 months.
By 2005, over 70% of Web Services implementations will be process-driven.
Services must be developed devoid of process in order that they can participate in an SOA that meets the goals of business agility
Service-Oriented Management techniques can assist in managing discrete services as well as end-to-end business processes.

Table of Contents:

I. Report Scope
II. The Context for Service-Oriented Process
- 2.1. What are Business Processes?
- 2.2. Why is Process Important to the Enterprise?
- 2.3. Connecting Business Requirements to IT Capabilities Through Process
- 2.4. Organizational Roles and Business Process
III. Fundamentals of Business Process
- 3.1. Business Process Terms and Concepts
- 3.2. Business Process Definition
- 3.3. Process Execution
- 3.4. Transactions and Exception Handling
- 3.5. Process Monitoring and Management
- 3.6. A History of Business Process Management and Workflow Solutions
IV. Applying SOA to Business Process: Service-Oriented Process
- 4.1. Web Services and SOA Approaches for Process Definition and Execution
- 4.2. Workflow
- 4.3. Transactions
- 4.4. Reliability
- 4.5. Guidance on the Specifications
V. Connecting the Dots: Process, Management, and Integration
- 5.1. Proper Mindset for SOA: Process-Orientation
- 5.2. Asynchrony and Coarse-Granularity: Enabled by Process
- 5.3. Fulfilling the Requirements for Loose Coupling with Service-Oriented Management
VI. Market Opportunity for Service-Oriented Process
VII. Future Trends for Service-Oriented Process
- 7.1. Smarter Invocation of Services
- 7.2. Portals and Processes
- 7.3. Enterprise Applications and Processes
- 7.4. Processes and Peer-to-Peer Implementations
VIII. Conclusions
- 8.1. Key Notes
- 8.2. Decision Points
- 8.3. Figures
- 8.4. Tables
IX. Glossary
X. Profiled Vendors

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Service-Oriented Process

Ronald Schmelzer — Fri, 23 Aug 2002 00:08:00 +0000

Business processes have always been an important, if understated, asset of enterprises. The nature and methods by which a company runs its business changes on a daily basis at various different levels in the company — from high-level strategic changes to lower-level implementation details. As a result of these changes, enterprises constantly struggle to make their businesses more responsive to business changes by connecting their business requirements to their IT and human capabilities.

However, automating business processes has historically been a difficult-to-achieve goal for most enterprises due to the flexibility of their IT infrastructure. Fortunately, businesses have a solution in Service-Oriented Process: a separate abstraction layer for business process definition and execution that leverages the capabilities of Service-oriented Architectures. Service-Oriented Process provides businesses an approach to tying business requirements to the Service model represented in the SOA metamodel, thereby providing a flexible approach towards implementing architectures that promote business agility. Download File