So here is some food for thought. I was thinking about the success rate Gartner (or others) have in predicting adoption/penetration rates for given approaches and technologies. Since much of what is discussed in SOA has roots in the EAI/B2B realm, I thought I'd try to see what the predictions were back in the "heyday" of EAI.
I was hoping to find a 1999/2000-ish article like "by 2005, 80% of companies will have adopted an EAI strategy and toolset." Then, ideally, find a 2005 article that indicated what the usage really is. Alas, it seems noone cares about EAI anymore. It's a Bad Thing. We only talk about the next thing now and that's SOA. That's what sells newsletters, research papers and consulting. In my searches, I came across this Wiki page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_application_integration I didn't find anything about adoption guesstimates but the "EAI implementation pitfalls" and "Advantages and Disadvantages" sections caught my eye. Could be "SOA" be substituted where "EAI" appears and the sections still be accurate? One phrase that really caught my eye was "Most of these failures are not due to the software itself or technical difficulties, but due to management issues." Clearly all the chat about "SOA governance" and "SOA lifecycle management" is attempt to address earlier stumbles. Have we really learned the lessons of the past? Or are we repeating the same ol' mistakes? -Rob
