<<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.>> You can read this at: <http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/soaroads/2006/11/soa_now_in_the_executive_suite.php> I get the distinct impression that non-IT management attitudes to SOA (and other relevant technological concepts such as BPM, SaaS, mashups etc.) varies very much according to the market being surveyed. I have been reliably informed that CxOs of large enterprises in Nordic countries (Scandinavia plus Finland) are well aware of the concept of SOA. From my experience of that region, this is no geat surprise to me. Spain is another competent early adopter country where they seem to be getting to grips with SOA. I would also expect countries like Australia, NZ and South Africa to be demonstrating competence in this area. From some of the contributions to this Group, it would seem that there is a high level of SOA awareness in Germany and the UK. Does it however extend to non-IT CxOs?? It would be interesting to read your impressions on the subject. Happy 29th December! Gervas
