This is a clear trend that I see in the SOA space, those charged with building SOAs in their enterprise are working on establishing approaches to the implementation of their SOA instance, and aren't yet looking for "key enabling SOA technology," at least not yet. This means that they are setting up methodologies, defining deliverables, and how all of these artifacts are related. What's more they're focusing on education, understanding just what they're doing before they do it. We've learned from the past that quick movements towards a technology trend, without the proper amount of upfront thinking typically means failure.
If you ask me this is a good trend. While SOA is attractive as the hot new technology, or perhaps the reinvention of existing technology, most enterprise architects view SOA as a key strategic initiative, and aren't willing to risk failure. This is evident in the SOA's slow uptake, now accelerating, as larger organization do some advanced planning as well as get a bit smarter in dealing with the notion of SOA, keeping in mind that it's really a journey not a destination.
Finding an approach isn't that easy, however. There certainly is a great deal written on the topic by some very smart people, but the right approach for your particular organization may be a bit different from the generalized approaches/methodologies you see around today. In other words, you'll be doing some planning to create the plan.
What this trend will result in, just you wait and see, is a focus on design and planning tools more than implementation technology. Truth be told, there aren't many design and planning tools out there for SOA, and the ones on the market aren't impressive at all. Hopefully, we'll see some creative and well-funded start-ups in this space soon. Categories of planning tools should include:
Modeling and implementation. Holistic modeling of the SOA and all of its working parts.
Security design and implementation. The ability to figure out how you're going to secure and govern your SOA.
Semantic understanding and metadata modeling. The ability to identify all application semantics and define a common metadata model.
Service design and implementation. The ability design services properly, implement them, and track them.
Orchestration and process modeling. The ability to model processes and implement them directly from the model.
The scope of SOA is enterprise-wide and hence in most organizations the CIO's are working across LOB boundaries to get the context right. This a paradigm shift if you consider the way IT projects where being implemented in the past. Lessons are being learnt in this new venture, management and technologist alike are treading cautiously.
The key technology enablers to facilitate governance, process orchestration, security etc are being constantly enhanced and refined by various vendors (IBM, webMethods to name a few). Albeit there is a long way to go.
The two aspects which any organization has to undertake when embarking on the SOA path are
1. Re-look at how projects are funded: Most of funding in organizations is initiative based i.e. the business needs a new function and IT works towards acheiving that function. However SOA calls for investments, the ROI on which may not be immediately palpable. In otherwords the SOA strategy has to blessed by both business and the IT organization at the highest levels.
2. A Common Meta data model and a semantic model has to be developed to faciliate re-use which is a key value-add of SOA.