This came in as a Google alert on SOA, a gentleman named Willem Kossen, who is an ICT Architect and Consultant at M&I/Partners. He asks the question: "SOA Maturity, Who has seen it implemented?" He goes on to clarify, and I'll see what I can do to help him. "I see SOA implementations daily. Most of them are either software products that use SOA internally or very small 'limited number of services' Low Hangin This came in as a Google alert on SOA, a gentleman named Willem Kossen, who is an ICT Architect and Consultant at M&I/Partners. He asks the question: “SOA Maturity, Who has seen it implemented?” He goes on to clarify, and I’ll see what I can do to help him. “I see SOA implementations daily. Most of them are either software products that use SOA internally or very small ‘limited number of services’ Low Hanging Fruit type implementations. What I don’t see are: Full blown SOA based implementations ” You have something there. As I’ve been stating, most of those calling projects “SOA” are largely JBOWS, and really provide no value. Therein is the current crisis in this emerging area, misunderstanding about what qualifies as a solution. You don’t see too many “SOAs” that are actually SOAs, and unless you’re able to take the project to a complete solutions-oriented conclusion, that investment won’t find much return. Having said that I can point to a few of my clients that are moving quickly to “Full blown SOA.” It takes time, planning, and hard work. No shortcuts here. “2. Thorough and working SOA governance.” Working? Yes. Thorough? Not really. SOA governance takes a lot of planning, time, and effort. You can’t just toss a SOA governance system at it and hope for the best. That’s what has been going on lately. I’m sure the SOA governance vendors will chime in here. “3. Full scale inter-company or inter-[organization] type SOA information exchange ” Sure, this is occurring but typically not between SOAs. It’s more service to service, typically from JBOWS to JBOWS. “4. Total efforts to transfer Legacy applications to SOA participants to achieve full scale SOA” Sure, this is working, but typically just around exposing services. I just completed a project with Legacy applications as the majority of the services employed. “5. Working Middleware / information brokers / enterprise service buses supporting nearly all functionality in a SOA environment” Sure they are there, but define “SOA environment.” To your point above, most are not leveraged within a complete SOA solution, more around simple integration. “6. Fully implemented BPM on top of a full SOA implementation.” Yep, a few of my clients have them running, and they are working great. I’m sure the vendors will chime in here, so look out. “Do you actually are or know someone that qualifies and is willing to share knowledge?” My honest answers, good questions. Thanks. Software Development