In a new survey SOA is clearly growing rapidly. "Enterprises are bullish on the concept of service-oriented architecture (SOA), and adoption is expected to double over the next two years, according to Evans Data Corporation's recently released Corporate Development Issues Survey. In this survey, close to a quarter of enterprise-level developers indicated that they already have service-oriented architecture in pl In a new survey SOA is clearly growing rapidly. “Enterprises are bullish on the concept of service-oriented architecture (SOA), and adoption is expected to double over the next two years, according to Evans Data Corporation’s recently released Corporate Development Issues Survey. In this survey, close to a quarter of enterprise-level developers indicated that they already have service-oriented architecture in place, and another 28% plan to do so within the next 24 months. Adoption of enterprise service buses (currently at 15%) will more than double during this same time, respondents said.” I’m seeing this within my practice as well. SOA is picking up steam both in both interest and implementation. “Other findings from over three hundred in-house corporate developer responses in the Corporate Development Issues Survey: Sixty percent of the in-house corporate developers said they will likely increase budget spending on web security allotments over the course of next year, web services came in second in the list of budgeting priorities, followed by integration projects. Ten percent of the respondents said they currently have grid computing, respondents indicated that this number will triple, to 30%, within 24 months The top reasons for corporations to outsource, to save money (22%), in-house skill shortages (20%), and access to special expertise (17%).” Indeed, the momentum is starting to build, and the desire and business cases are there. What is missing in many instances, however, are the SOA skills needed within the enterprises looking to move to SOA, as stated above. Specifically, these enterprises need people who understand strategic IT planning, synergies with enterprise architecture, and approaches to make SOA a success within the enterprise. That’s the largest risk right now as money begins to flow into these projects. At the end of the day, this is good news, as long as those looking to leverage SOA within their organization understand the far reaching impact, and how the measure the business benefits…upsides and downsides. It will be interesting to see the same survey next year; I suspect it will be more growth. Software Development