Ronan Bradley's Roads to SOA« Service Oriented or Shared Service Oriented? | Main | In 2007, ESB Buyers beware: consolidation, commoditization and confusion »
November 29, 2006SOA now in the executive suite - sometimes
A nagging worry among SOA advocates over the last year or so has been that SOA was not being understood or bought into by C-level management. A GCR’s survey – sponsored by BEA – shows that this is now changing in the surveyed companies. It should be stressed that this survey was only of large organizations which had taken the first step already and deployed some SOA.
The survey states that CIOs and CTOs are now the leading sponsors of SOA programmes. While this clearly demonstrates what most of us engaged in SOA programmes or advising such programmes already know: SOA is progressing along the normal adoption curve from pilot to more systematic deployment and as this happens the sponsorship moves up the management structures.
Two nuggets which I found interesting were:
• The second biggest cost (after software infrastructure at 40% of total spend) was staff reskilling – at 30% of the total cost. This should not be a surprise – SOA puts significant new strains on IT staff both in terms of technical skills and more importantly governance and collaborative skills.
• The largest components of the software spend was on ESBs and security (both at 24% of that 40% of total). This suggests that the ESB has been recognized as a keystone product in a SOA strategy. This may come as a surprise to the remaining hold-outs who continue to argue strongly that ESBs are irrelevant or transitory.
Two caveats worth noting:
While it is good to see sponsorship at the CIO/CTO level, as a business strategy SOA needs line of business sponsorship as well. If SOA remains only an IT strategy, organizations will risk not gaining the full benefits.
And with regard to the uptake of Enterprise Service Bus products, what isn’t asked or answered by this survey was what the respondents meant when they said ESB – a subject which I will return to.
Ronan
Posted by rbradley in
Market trends
|
Digg This|
Add to del.icio.us
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ebizq.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1031
Hi there
It is important to highlight some of the key objectives of the ESB, perhaps in light of issues or perhaps anti-patterns caused from not orientating around an ESB or poorly strategizing when and how its applicable.
a) An ESB is the basis (or v1) of a "SOA integration engine" - integration engines are adapting and changing around open standards, and the hype around the reality of what is required and not. The ESB, like the fundamental requirement of a single integration platform, will remain a key point of abstraction and control.
b) An ESB provides a common framework for security, audit, flow-control, error management etc. Be is synchronous or asyc inter service comms, the need to implement these basic features is critical of many enterprises, esp Hospitals. Attempting to these and many other issues point to point is near impossible - especially for a single pane of glass view.
c) An ESB abstracts end-points for enhanced "plugability"
Should apps talk service to service? of course not, just like we avoid point to point FTP's with basic integration. Abstraction of end-points enhances plug and play activities, especially during scheduled downtime or services provided by less than stable infrastructure. The ability to better define and control interface boundaries / contracts is a important job of the ESB.
d) Your ESB is not just a product
Your integration teams [SOA] capabilities are the key to success, poor capabilities will drive poor ESB implementations and prevent you realising the true value-add of the underpinning technology.
Cheers
Ck
Posted by: Chris K at January 17, 2007 07:20 AM
Post a comment
Subscribe to feed
