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.

SOA-Enabled Business Service Management (BSM)

The word service has a surfeit of different meanings in today’s enterprise. First, there are information technology (IT) services that represent capabilities that the IT department offers to its customers, namely, the business. Second, business services address the requirements of line of business and provide real-time visibility and control over the business to management. And finally, with the rise of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), enterprises are now familiar with loosely coupled services implemented through emerging technologies such as Web Services that represent software functionality and data that the business can compose as needed into flexible business processes.

Each type of service has its own implementation requirements, management technology, and best practices that firms leverage to maintain the value of the services, but the real challenge to the effectiveness of each type of service is that the people in charge of the business and IT don’t see eye-to-eye about the visibility needs of the organization limits the effectiveness of each type of service. As SOA becomes the established approach to Enterprise Architecture, however, there promises to be a convergence of the various types of service into a single, business-oriented, loosely coupled service abstraction that provides sufficient real-time visibility and control to the enterprise.

ZapForum Webcast: Implementing a Reliable SOA Lifecycle

Guest Experts: Michael Morris, CTO, MW2 Consulting, and Avrami Tzur, Senior Director SOA Strategy, Mercury

Topics:

Audience will learn:
• Learn how to identify points of reliability and assess your SOA using new best practices and approaches.
• Learn an SOA Blueprint that might help you quickly implement SOA solutions that deliver …
  

OASIS Develops SOA Adoption Blueprints

“There is a shortage of clear, demonstrable examples of working SOA implementations that teams can use to jumpstart new projects,” said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink LLC. “By defining an archetypal set of business requirements and functions that SOA best practices can address, the adoption blueprints will encourage the production of useful implementation examples and lower the risk of SOA initiatives overall.”

Read more at: eBizQ

OASIS Members Form Committee to Develop Blueprints for SOA Business Requirements

“There is a shortage of clear, demonstrable examples of working SOA implementations that teams can use to jumpstart new projects,” said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink LLC. “By defining an archetypal set of business requirements and functions that SOA best practices can address, the adoption blueprints will encourage the production of useful implementation examples and lower the risk of SOA initiatives overall.”

Read more at: OASIS Press Release

MW2 Consulting: Combining an SOA Methodology & Blueprint for Successful SOA Implementations

MW2 Consulting is a midsize professional services firm focused on offering Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions. Unlike many such firms, however, MW2 leverages key Service Orientation best practices within their organization to deliver faster, lower risk, more successful SOA implementations than traditional engagement approaches can provide. Specifically, their agile, model-driven engagement methodology combined with their comprehensive SOA Blueprint enable MW2 Consulting to leverage Service-Oriented approaches to deliver successful SOA implementations to their clients.

Grand Central Teams With Leading Global and Mid-Market Systems Integrators

“Grand Central’s Network is an excellent solution for systems integrators
who need a framework for building service-oriented infrastructure solutions
and piloting Web services projects,” said Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink senior
analyst. “Their On Demand platform takes SIs out of the commodity
infrastructure business and back to their core competency — building custom
solutions for their clients.”

Read more at: Grand Central Press Release