lustratus LiteBytes

One of the 2008 forecasts in the annual Lustratus look ahead is that SOA decision-marking has become fractured in most companies, with clashes between architects / IT who ‘get it’, and business-oriented budget holders who don’t.

In fact, this problem is turning out to be so severe that it is causing SOA adoption to stall at many companies – although enterprise-wide decisions may have been taken to adopt SOA, projects steadfastly refuse to enact this because of the extra costs, at least initially.

The roots of the difficulty here are twofold: understandable cynicism and the need to reach critical mass of SOA deployment before benefits start to show. However, there may be a light on the horizon, as discussed in more detail in the Lustratus Whitepaper, ‘Justifying SOA to the Business’, available for free from the Lustratus webstore. For business audiences, it may be that the enhanced business visibility offered by SOA could be a compelling benefit to justify the extra investment, and this visibility becomes apparent immediately the project is complete – there is no need to wait for critical mass to be achieved before seeing the benefit.

Hopefully, this angle of attack may succeed in breaking down the SOA adoption log-jam, enabling companies to flow smoothly to widespread SOA adoption.

Steve