According to the Burton Group the issues around SOA are not as much about technology and complexity, it's about the people and the processes within an enterprise. Indeed, in this recent Network World article, some of these issues are highlighted. "'The state of the union of SOA right now is there's some fatigue set in,' Howard [Burton Group's Chris Howard] said, noting that when he recently asked an audience of According to the Burton Group the issues around SOA are not as much about technology and complexity, it’s about the people and the processes within an enterprise. Indeed, in this recent Network World article, some of these issues are highlighted. “‘The state of the union of SOA right now is there’s some fatigue set in,’ Howard [Burton Group’s Chris Howard] said, noting that when he recently asked an audience of 300 people whether their SOA efforts were going well, only a half dozen responded positively.” “The problem’s not technology, Howard said. People and processes are at the heart of what’s wrong with SOA as it currently exists in enterprises.” I know I’ve been a broken record about this issue for a few years now, and while it’s nice to get this validation, it’s not nice to hear that SOA progress is hindered by office politics, turf battles, and good old fashion laziness. That’s just the truth of the matter. The issues with SOA are that SOA is a core and systemic change to the way we do IT. Change is something everyone seems to embrace conceptually, but when it comes down to actually changing systems that are part of someone’s job security, that’s when things get ugly fast. Moreover, those who are tasked with driving SOA within their enterprise are not given the money and/or the power to drive change. Instead they are asked to “convince” and “influence.” That never works; you have to control their budgets and be able to fire them in order to drive change at the speed it needs to be driven. So, the architecture remains static and difficult to change, and the architecture is not doing a good job in support of the business. We need to change that, but can’t because people and processes stand in the way. This is perhaps the motivation behind the new Web-oriented architecture movement, or WOA. In essence, developers and architects are so frustrated with the people and processes issues, within the enterprise that they are circumventing the politics and turf issues by outsourcing bits and pieces of architecture to Web-based development and hosting resources. I can’t say that I blame them. Software Development