soa adoption: technology diversity accelerators

Making Leaders Successful Every Day

July 23, 2008

SOA Adoption: Technology Diversity Acceleratorsby Randy Heffnerfor Enterprise Architecture Professionals

www.forrester.com

© 2008, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester, Forrester Wave, RoleView, Technographics, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Forrester clients may make one attributed copy or slide of each figure contained herein. Additional reproduction is strictly prohibited. For additional reproduction rights and usage information, go to www.forrester.com. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. To purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected].

For Enterprise Architecture ProfessionalsIncludes data from Business Data Services

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYAlthough it is no surprise to say that technology diversity drives adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA), Forrester’s survey data shows patterns in the use of development platforms, development languages, and application platform vendors that affect how rapidly certain IT segments adopt SOA. For example, enterprises with four or more application platform vendors have significantly higher SOA adoption than enterprises that use three or fewer. Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) that use three development platforms have significantly higher SOA penetration than those using only one. By finding the patterns that match their organization’s technology environment, architects can bolster their case for SOA with industry adoption numbers that correspond closely with their peer organizations’ adoption rates.

TABLE OF CONTENTSSOA Adoption Varies By Technology And By Technology Diversity

For Enterprises, Number Of Platforms Matters More Than Which Platform

With Development Languages, Current Use Of SOA Varies Less Than Plans For SOA

Enterprises With Four Or More Platform Vendors Have Above-Average SOA Adoption

For SMBs, Number of Platforms Is A Major Accelerator For SOA Adoption

For SMBs, Language Count Matters Less Than Which Platforms And Languages

SMBs With Three Or More Platform Vendors Have Above-Average SOA Adoption

RECOMMENDATIONS

Use Technology Diversity Numbers To Bolster The Case For SOA

NOTES & RESOURCESThis report draws from Forrester’s Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q3 2007.

Related Research Documents“How To Build Your SOA Platform”May 16, 2008

“Defining Your SOA Platform Strategy”May 14, 2008

“The Elements Of SOA Maturity”March 29, 2005

July 23, 2008

SOA Adoption: Technology Diversity AcceleratorsThe Technology Diversity Factors That Drive Earlier SOA AdoptionThis is the fourth document in the “2007 SOA Adoption Data” series.

by Randy Heffnerwith Gene Leganza and Kahini Ranade

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www.forrester.com

http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=45885&src=46231pdf



© 2008, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction ProhibitedJuly 23, 2008

SOA Adoption: Technology Diversity Accelerators For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

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SOA ADOPTION VARIES BY TECHNOLOGY AND BY TECHNOLOGY DIVERSITY

According to data from Forrester’s Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q3 2007, SOA adoption levels, though strong across the board, differ according to: 1) the development platform, development language, and application platform an organization uses and 2) the number of development platforms, development languages, and application platform vendors an organization uses. For both enterprises and SMBs, the number of technologies or vendors tends to make a bigger difference than which technologies or vendors an organization uses. Furthermore, a high rate of SOA adoption among users of a given application platform vendor may be largely explained by the fact that the vendor’s customers tend to have higher vendor diversity overall. By finding the technology usage patterns that match with their organization, architects will find numbers to bolster their case for adoption of SOA.

FOR ENTERPRISES, NUMBER OF PLATFORMS MATTERS MORE THAN WHICH PLATFORM

Among enterprises, SOA penetration (measured by counting enterprises that either currently use SOA or that plan to adopt it during 2008) varies a bit more according to the number of development platforms used than according to the specific platform used. The responses of the enterprise custom application decision-makers we surveyed showed:

· A 15 percentage point spread according to platform used. Our survey showed a difference of 15 percentage points in SOA penetration among users of different development platforms. At the high end, SOA penetration was 83% of those we surveyed for both users of open source frameworks and users of Java. At the low end, SOA penetration was 68% for users of Microsoft .NET. Note that these numbers do not mean that the respondent uses only a given platform; they merely show SOA adoption of enterprises that use at least that platform. Current use of SOA showed an 18 percentage point spread among users of different platforms — from 65% of those we surveyed that use open source frameworks to 47% for users of proprietary fourth-generation language environments (4GLs) (see Figure 1-1).

· A 23 percentage point spread according to number of platforms. By contrast, our survey showed a difference of 23 percentage points in SOA penetration when looking at how many different development platforms an organization uses — and the more platforms an enterprise uses, the higher its SOA adoption. At the high end, SOA penetration came in at 28 of 34 surveyed (82%) that use four or more platforms. At the low end, SOA penetration was 17 of 29 surveyed (59%) that use one or two development platforms. Current use of SOA varies by 20 percentage points (see Figure 1-2).

The correlation between larger numbers of platforms and higher SOA adoption makes sense for enterprises. Greater platform diversity often arises because different teams and different divisions have different technology directions (sometimes for valid business reasons and sometimes because of poor architecture governance), and this leads to more integration issues. In such situations, SOA’s applicability to integration issues leads to faster and deeper SOA adoption.

© 2008, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 23, 2008


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Figure 1 Enterprise SOA Penetration: Using More Platforms Leads To Faster SOA Adoption

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.46231

Measured by number of platforms used, enterprise SOA penetration varies by 23 percentage points

1-2

Measured by platform used, enterprise SOA penetration varies by 15 percentage points 1-1

†Mainframe or midrange platforms

*Proprietary 4GL development tools

We use with an enterprise-level strategy for and commitment to SOA

We use selectively, without a clear strategy

Will pursue within 12 months

Not pursuing and have no immediate plans to do so





“For custom-developed applications, which development platforms do you use?”

*ColdFusion, Magic Software, PowerBuilder, etc.†IBM mainframes, Unisys mainframes, AS/400, iSeries, NonStop, VMS, etc.‡AJAX, Flash or Flex, etc.

Four or more development platforms

Three development platforms

One or two development platforms 12

6

6

Note: This graph is scaled according to percentages even though the raw numbers are provided on the line. Thus, a bar for 50% of one group and another bar for 50% of another group will be the same length even though the numbers are different.

Base: 86 software and services decision-makers at North American and European enterprises

Open source frameworks 17% 30% 35% N= 23

Java, Java EE, J2EE 21% 31% 31% N= 58

32% 21% 26% N= 34

17% 29% 29% N= 41

‡Rich interface in a browser 18% 25% 32% N= 44

Microsoft .NET

17%

17%

21%

24%

25%

32% 14% 27% 27% N= 63

4

6

6

7

6

6

5

10 12 N= 34

N= 23

N= 29

Base: 87 software and services decision-makers at North American and European enterprises (percentages may not total 100 because of rounding)

Use/planning to use SOA Not using SOA


*Calculated by counting the number of platforms named in response to the question “For custom-developedapplications, which development platforms do you use?”

For custom-developed applications, the number of development platforms used:*

Source: Forrester’s Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q3 2007



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With Development Languages, Current Use Of SOA Varies Less Than Plans For SOA

We examined SOA penetration differences between development language used and the number of languages used, and we compared these findings with our development platform analysis. We found that diversity in languages has a moderately greater tendency to drive SOA adoption. The responses of the enterprise custom application decision-makers we surveyed showed:

· A 14 percentage point spread according to language used. Our survey showed a difference of 14 percentage points in SOA penetration among users of different development languages. At the high end, SOA penetration was 83% of those we surveyed that use Java. At the low end, SOA penetration was 69% of those that use Microsoft C#. Note that these numbers do not mean that the respondent uses only a given language; they merely show SOA adoption of enterprises that use at least that language. Current use of SOA showed a 15 percentage point spread — from 64% that use Java to 49% that use server scripting languages (see Figure 2-1).

· A 29 percentage point spread according to number of languages used. Measuring by number of languages used, our survey showed a larger variation in SOA penetration compared with the variation when looking at the specific language used; however, current use of SOA had about the same variation when looking at the number of languages and the specific language used. In both cases, the more languages an enterprise uses, the higher its SOA adoption. For SOA penetration, the range of variation was 29 percentage points with a high of 23 of 27 surveyed (85%) that use five or more languages and a low of 15 of 27 surveyed (56%) that use one or two development languages. Current use of SOA varies by 15 percentage points (see Figure 2-2).

One might expect that, with development languages, diversity would drive differences in the range of both SOA penetration and current use of SOA. The fact that the more languages used, the larger the difference between current use of SOA and SOA penetration indicates that language diversity is associated more with anticipated future pain (i.e., pain that will drive SOA adoption) than it is with current-day pain.



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Figure 2 Enterprise SOA Penetration: Using More Languages Leads To Faster SOA Adoption

Source: Forrester Research, Inc. 46231

Measured by number of languages used, enterprise SOA penetration varies by 29 percentage points

2-2

Measured by language used, enterprise SOA penetration varies by 14 percentage points 2-1









“For custom-developed applications, which languages does your company use for development or maintenance?”


Java 17% 19% 34% 31% N= 59

COBOL 18% 27% 30% 24% N= 33

*Proprietary 4GL development tools 20% 27% 30% 23% N= 30

†Server scripting languages 25% 24% 25% 25% N= 51

Microsoft Visual Basic.NET 30% 27% 24% 19% N= 63

Microsoft C# 31% 29% 27% 13% N= 45

*ColdFusion, Magic Software, PowerBuilder, etc.†Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc.

Note: These graphs are scaled according to percentages even though the raw numbers are provided on the lines. Thus, a bar for 50% of one group and another bar for 50% of another group will be the same length even though the numbers are different.


Five or more development languages

Three or four development languages

One or two development languages 12 3 6 6

8 6 7 11

4 7 9 7

N= 27

N= 27

N= 32



*Calculated by counting the number of languages named in response to the question “For custom-developedapplications, which languages does your company use for development or maintenance?”


For custom-developed applications, the number of languages used:*



6

Enterprises With Four Or More Platform Vendors Have Above-Average SOA Adoption

The final question in our survey asks respondents whether their organizations have, within the past 12 months, been customers of any of a number of software vendors. Based on this question, we examined SOA adoption among customers of the application platform vendors mentioned in our survey. In keeping with the SOA adoption trends for numbers of platforms and numbers of languages, the more diverse an enterprise’s platform vendor use, the higher its SOA adoption. The responses of enterprise platform software decision-makers we surveyed showed that:

· Enterprises with four or more platform vendors have above-average SOA adoption. In our survey, SOA penetration was 83% among enterprises that named four or more application platform vendors. It was only 52% among those that named one to three vendors. Current use of SOA showed a similarly clear dividing line between three and four vendors. Still, SOA adoption is strong for enterprises both above and below this dividing line (see Figure 3-1).

· By vendor, SOA penetration varies by 18 percentage points. Both SOA penetration and current use of SOA were highest among customers of BEA Systems: 86% and 65%, respectively.1 Both were lowest among Microsoft customers (specifically named as users of products other than Windows, Office, or Exchange): Microsoft customers had SOA penetration of 68% and current use of SOA of 51%. Sun Microsystems’ customers’ SOA adoption rate was close to that of BEA’s customers: 81% (see Figure 3-2).

· High vendor diversity correlates with high “by vendor” SOA adoption numbers. An interesting anomaly in SOA adoption numbers becomes apparent by combining the previous two points: While customers with few application platform vendors have below-average SOA adoption, customer SOA adoption levels are above average for all of the application platforms vendors in our survey. As it turns out, for each of the platform vendors, at least 50% of their customers in our survey use four or more platform vendors (see Figure 3-3). This creates the side effect that a “by vendor” view of SOA adoption shows above-average adoption for all of the vendors. For some vendors, nearly 90% of their customers in our survey use four or more platform vendors, which partially explains why some vendors’ customers report higher SOA adoption. For example, Microsoft has the lowest percentage of customers that use four or more platform vendors, only 53%, so Microsoft’s “by vendor” SOA adoption numbers more closely match the SOA adoption numbers of enterprises with low platform vendor diversity.

Examining the platform vendor diversity dividing line more closely, greater support emerges for placing the dividing line that separates above-average SOA adoption from below-average SOA adoption between three and four platform vendors. There is a 19 percentage point spread between enterprises that name three platform vendors and those that name four, but there is a spread of only eight percentage points between those that name one and those that name two and a spread of six points between those that name two and those that name three. The spread between four and five named platforms is 13 percentage points.



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Figure 3 Enterprises With More Application Platform Vendors More Quickly Adopt SOA


The difference between enterprises with one to three and four or more application vendors makes clear the dividing line for above- and below-average SOA adoption

3-1










Measured by application platform vendor, SOA penetration varies by 18 percentage points 3-2

“Have you been a customer to any of the following software vendors in the past 12 months?”


Not using SOA Use/planning to use SOA

Four or more application platform vendors

One to three application platform vendors 48% 19% 20% 13% N= 142

17% 34% 20% 29% N= 134

*Lotus, Portals, Workplace †Rational, OnDemand, Tivoli ‡DB2, Information management, WebSphere §Not including former PeopleSoft/Siebel applications


BEA Systems 14% 21% 30% 35% N= 63

Software AG 19% 26% 19% 37% N= 27

Sybase 21% 21% 27% 31% N= 62

Microsoft (other than Exchange, Office, or Windows) 32% 17% 26% 25% N= 224

§Oracle platform software 29% 16% 29% 26% N= 161

‡IBM for middleware and infrastructure 26% 20% 24% 30% N= 149

SAP 25% 19% 25% 31% N= 110

†IBM Other 23% 19% 24% 35% N= 123

*IBM for portals, collaboration, email 22% 15% 29% 34% N= 94

Sun Microsystems 19% 18% 32% 32% N= 120

Consolidated SOA adoption for all IBM customers N= 196 27% 17% 26% 31%

*Calculated by counting the number of application platform vendors named in response to the question “Have you been a customer of any of the following software vendors in the past 12 months?”

Number of application platform vendors:*



8

Figure 3 Enterprises With More Application Platform Vendors More Quickly Adopt SOA (Cont.)


Customers of some application platform vendors are more likely to use more vendors, thus more likely to adopt SOA

3-3

N= 149

N= 144

N= 120

N= 27

N= 62

N= 94

N= 123

N= 110

N= 161

N= 224 Microsoft

IBM middleware

SAP

IBM portal

IBM other

Oracle

Sybase

Sun Microsystems

BEA Systems

Software AG 0% 11%

16%

18%

21%

29%

28%

31%

31%

36%

39%

0%

1%

0%

0%

8%

3%

3%

2%

1%

56% 33%

30%

27%

32%

19%

21%

21%

25%

19%

14% 39%

42%

54%

54%

47%

41%

46%

50%

52%



One Two or three Four or five Six or more


Even though, in creating this chart, we include three perspectives on IBM’s customer base, IBM is only ever counted once as a platform vendor.


FOR SMBS, NUMBER OF PLATFORMS IS A MAJOR ACCELERATOR FOR SOA ADOPTION

With SOA adoption among SMBs, there is fairly wide variation in SOA penetration and current use of SOA when measuring by development platform, by number of development platforms, and by development language — but not as much variation as there is when measuring by number of development languages. The responses of the SMB custom application decision-makers we surveyed showed:

· A 48 percentage point spread according to platform used. Our survey showed a difference of 48 percentage points in SOA penetration among SMB users of different development platforms. At the high end, SOA penetration was 20 of 26 surveyed that use Java (77%). At the low end, SOA penetration was four of 14 surveyed that use proprietary 4GLs (29%). Note that these numbers do not mean that the respondent uses only a given platform; they show SOA



9

adoption of SMBs that use at least that platform. Current use of SOA showed a 40 percentage point spread, again with Java users reporting the highest current use and proprietary 4GL users reporting the lowest (see Figure 4-1).

· A 41 percentage point spread according to number of platforms. Our survey showed a difference of 41 percentage points in SOA penetration when looking at the number of different development platforms an SMB organization uses. As with enterprise SOA adoption, the more platforms an SMB has, the higher its SOA adoption; however, the number of platforms serves as an even greater accelerator of SOA adoption among SMBs than it does among enterprises. At the high end, SOA penetration came in at 21 of 30 surveyed (70%) that use three or more platforms. At the low end, SOA penetration was six of 21 surveyed (29%) that use only one development platform. Current use of SOA varies by 39 percentage points (see Figure 4-2).

These results make sense for SMBs: SMBs that build custom applications tend to have fewer resources than enterprises, so they tend to look for simpler, self-contained development approaches. Thus, SMBs that opt for proprietary 4GLs, wanting to stick to simple things that they know, would be slower to adopt SOA. By contrast, SMBs that have more complex requirements that demand the enterprise-level qualities of Java would be used to more complex development and so would be quicker to learn about and adopt SOA. In similar fashion, SMBs that can get by with the simplicity of a single platform would be slow to adopt SOA, while those that are driven to multiple platforms could sooner deal with the SOA adoption learning curve.



10

Figure 4 SMB SOA Penetration: Using More Platforms Leads To Much Faster SOA Adoption

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.46231

Measured by number of platforms used, SMB SOA penetration varies by 41 percentage points4-2

Measured by platform used, SMB SOA penetration varies by 48 percentage points 4-1









“For custom-developed applications, which development platforms do you use?”


Base: 75 software and services decision-makers at North American and European SMBs

*AJAX, Flash or Flex, etc.†IBM mainframes, Unisys mainframes, AS/400, iSeries, NonStop, VMS, etc.‡ColdFusion, Magic Software, PowerBuilder, etc.

†Mainframe or midrange platforms

Microsoft .NET

*Rich interface in a browser

Open source frameworks like Hibernate or Spring

Java, Java EE, J2EE 6 4 10 6 N= 26

5 1 4 4 N= 14

12 5 9 6 N= 32

22 9 12 6 N= 49

12 3 6 4 N= 25

10 1 2 1 N= 14


‡Proprietary 4GL development platforms


Three or more development platforms

Two development platforms

One development platform 15 3 3 N= 21

13 2 5 4 N= 24

9 5 10 6 N= 30


*Calculated by counting the number of platforms named in response to the question “For custom-developedapplications, which development platforms do you use?”


For custom-developed applications, the number of development platforms used:*

0



11

For SMBs, Language Count Matters Less Than Which Platforms And Languages

Among SMBs, looking the particular languages SMBs used, like platforms and number of platforms used, shows a high variation in SOA adoption; but, the number of languages used matters less. The responses of the custom application decision-makers we surveyed showed:

· A 45 percentage point spread according to language used. Our survey showed a difference of 45 percentage points in SOA penetration among SMB users of different development languages. As with the examination of the specific platform used, Java users were at the high end, with SOA penetration at 21 of 31 surveyed (68%), and proprietary 4GLs were at the low end, with three of 13 surveyed (23%). This very low SOA penetration among proprietary 4GL users drives the large 45-point spread. Note that these numbers do not mean that the respondent uses only a given language; they merely show SOA adoption of SMBs that use at least that language. Current use of SOA among enterprises using different languages showed a similar spread: 41 percentage points, again with Java and proprietary 4GLs at the high and low ends, respectively (see Figure 5-1).

· A 25 percentage point spread according to number of languages used. Unlike with enterprise SOA adoption patterns, measuring SMB adoption by number of languages used shows a smaller variation in SOA penetration than measuring by the specific language used. It is still true, though, that the more languages an SMB uses, the higher its SOA adoption. For SOA penetration among SMBs with different numbers of languages, the range of variation was 25 percentage points, with SMBs that use three or more development languages showing SOA penetration at 20 of 31 surveyed (65%), and SMBs using one or two languages showing SOA penetration at 17 of 42 surveyed (40%). Current use of SOA varies even less by number of languages used, with a spread of 15 percentage points between the two groups (see Figure 5-2).

As an additional note, there is only a 3% spread in SOA penetration between SMBs that use one development language and those that use two languages. This, combined with the 17% spread in SOA penetration between SMBs that use one development platform and those that use two, indicates that SMBs have a tougher time dealing with multiple platforms than with multiple languages, as having multiple platforms seems to sooner drive SMBs to find relief with SOA.



12

Figure 5 SMB SOA Penetration: Using More Languages Has Less Impact On SOA Adoption


Measured by number of languages used, SMB SOA penetration varies less, by only 25 percentage points

5-2

Measured by language used, SMB SOA penetration varies by 45 percentage points 5-1









“For custom-developed applications, which languages does your company use for development or maintenance?”



3 12 6

7 13 5

1 1 1

1 4 2

5 9 9

3 4 3

N= 31

N= 43

N= 13

N= 43

N= 13

N= 19

*Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. †ColdFusion, Magic Software, PowerBuilder, etc.

Not using SOA Use/planning to use SOA 10

18

6

20

9

†Proprietary 4GL development tools

Microsoft C#

*Server scripting languages

COBOL

Microsoft Visual Basic.NET

Java

10

*Calculated by counting the number of languages named in response to the question: “For custom-developed applications, which languages does your company use for development or maintenance?”



4

N= 42

N= 31 Three or more development languages

One or two development languages 25

11

4

5

8 5

10 5


For custom-developed applications, the number of development languages used:*



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SMBs With Three Or More Platform Vendors Have Above-Average SOA Adoption

Like enterprises, SMBs have a clear dividing line on SOA adoption based on the number of application platform vendors they named in our survey. But because SMBs tend to have less technology diversity than enterprises, the dividing line is a notch lower than that of enterprises. The responses of SMB platform software decision-makers we surveyed showed that:

· SMBs with three or more platform vendors have above-average SOA adoption. In our survey, SOA penetration was 75% among SMBs that named three or more application platform vendors. It was only 41% among those that named one or two vendors. Current use of SOA showed a lesser spread of 23 percentage points between the two groups (see Figure 6-1).

· By vendor, SOA penetration varies by 20 percentage points. Among SMBs, both SOA penetration and current use of SOA were highest among customers of Sun: 67% and 50% of those we surveyed, respectively. Microsoft customers (specifically named as users of products other than Windows, Office, or Exchange) and IBM Rational, Tivoli, and OnDemand customers both showed 47% SOA penetration, while Microsoft customers, at 30%, had the lowest current use of SOA (see Figure 6-2).

· SMB customers of all application platform vendors show above-average SOA adoption. SMB SOA adoption levels are above average for customers of all of the application platforms vendors. Because so few SMBs in our survey reported using more than two application platform vendors, we can’t do the same analysis that we did for enterprises regarding the number of platform vendors used by customers of a given vendor. However, the net result appears to be the same as it was for enterprises: Vendors with customers showing greater diversity in vendors have higher levels of customer SOA adoption. Furthermore, Microsoft’s position as the dominant SMB application platform vendor tends to weight SMB customers’ SOA adoption rates toward the average for all SMBs. In our survey, 59% of SMB respondents identified Microsoft as one of their platform vendors. The next closest was IBM: Consolidating across our survey’s three platform perspectives on IBM’s customer base, 24% of respondents named IBM as a platform vendor.

As with variation by number of development languages, the SMB SOA adoption dividing line across number of platform vendors holds up on closer inspection. There is only a 1% difference in SOA penetration between SMBs that name one application platform vendor and those that name two, and current use of SOA is the same between the two groups. This emphasizes even more that having three platform vendors is the point where SMBs begin to feel more pressure to adopt SOA.



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Figure 6 SMB SOA Penetration: Using More Platform Vendors Leads To Faster SOA Adoption


Measured by application platform vendor, SOA penetration varies by 20 percentage points 6-2









Base: 255 software and services decision-makers at North American and European SMBs (percentages do not total 100 because of rounding)

“Have you been a customer any of the following software vendors in the past 12 months?”

*DB2, Information management, Websphere †Lotus, Portals, Workplace ‡Not including former PeopleSoft/Siebel applications §OnDemand, Rational, Tivoli

Microsoft, other than Exchange, Office, or Windows

*IBM for middleware and infrastructure

Sun Microsystems 33% 8% 42% 17% N= 36

44% 10% 27% 20% N= 41

†IBM for portals, collaboration, email 46% 8% 33% 13% N= 24

‡Oracle platform software 51% 12% 21% 16% N= 57

§IBM other 15% 26% 6% N= 34 53%

53% 8% 22% 17% N= 151

Consolidated SOA adoption for all IBM customers 10% 25% 15% 50% N= 60

Three application platform vendors makes a clear dividing line for above- and below-average SOA adoption

6-1


Three or more application platform vendors

One or two application platform vendors 59% 14% 19% 8%

25% 34% 16% 25%

N= 165

N= 32








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R E C O M M E N D A T I O N S

USE TECHNOLOGY DIVERSITY NUMBERS TO BOLSTER THE CASE FOR SOA

For architects building the case for SOA in their organizations, the most useful data in this report is how SOA adoption levels accelerate with technology diversity.2 As secondary support, architects can use the SOA adoption numbers associated with their enterprise’s or SMB’s platform, language, or vendor. However, since these numbers don’t isolate individual technologies or vendors from other technologies and vendors, they may be less useful for building a case. Then again, in all but one case (SMBs using proprietary 4GLs), the SOA adoption numbers are strong across the board, so comparing oneself to one’s technology peers can still be beneficial. If you work for one of those SMBs using proprietary 4GLs, you’ll have to turn to other factors to build the case that your peers are rapidly adopting SOA.

ENDNOTES1 Our survey was conducted prior to Oracle’s acquisition of BEA Systems, so the results in this report are

presented separately for Oracle and BEA.

2 In addition, architects should use data showing SOA adoption in relation to budget sizes. See the April 9, 2008, “SOA Adoption: Budgets Don’t Matter Much” report.


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