Who’s Blocking SOA?

There has been a lot of blogging going on around the notion of SOA adoption. Specifically, ZapThink’s Ron Schmelzer post, and Joe McKendrick response around Ron’s assertion that SOA is making more sense to business than IT. Indeed, that in many instances, IT is blocking the adoption of SOA.

While I can see Ron’s point, it’s been my experience that SOA adoption seems to come from two directions, considering my practice. First, more innovative IT organizations, those who want to begin to experiment with the notion of SOA, and typically do so outside of the control of the business. We can call this the technology sell. Second, interest in SOA is driven from the business guys, typically CIOs and CEOs that are responding to their understanding of the value of SOA, and are pushing their IT organizations to examine its potential value. We can call this the business sell.

To Ron’s point, within that second scenario there is indeed resistance from IT. Not complete and utter pushback, just cautious around the issues with the adoption of any new technology and approaches. In these situations I spend more time going after hearts and minds than pushing the technology and approach…the technology is easy, hearts and minds are not.

So, what does one do?

• Understand that you need to approach all enterprises and problem domains differently. While many IT organization are ripe and ready for SOA, and need little selling just coaching, other’s find the notion a bit threatening, something you address with education not force.
• Sell the value not the technology. The technology will work. Getting people to understand the value is something is a bit more difficult.
• Keep in mind that some organizations are going to adopt SOA slower, or faster, than other organizations. Thus, you need to consider the “ability to adopt” as a key variable when working with enterprises on SOA.