So much for the decline of SOA. Joe McKendrick reported on a Wintergreen Research projection that SOA will grow by 17% to rise from the current $3.3 billion to $10.3 billion by 2015. This is very consistent with the Research & Markets market 2008 estimate that putting the SOA infrastructure market as growing from $2 billion in 2007 to more than $9 billion by 2014.
We have been discussing the growth in SOA that we see from our perspective for some time. It is nice to see more validation of this perspective. And this is a conservative estimate.
Joe notes that AMR Research sees a much larger market ahead. They estimate the SOA market will grow from the current spending level of $28 billion to $52 billion by 2014. AMR analyst Ian Finley explained that their estimate is based on 600 companies globally, and covered a broader range of software and services than other estimates. I think this broader range of services is appropriate as SOA is dependent on many components, including governance, security, testing, validation, and visualization.
To focus only on SOA infrastructure does not provide the complete picture. There is a much larger pie in terms of the strategy, delivery and maintenance effort required to make SOA happen. It is like only counting sports ticket sales and not including the concessions, gear, TV rights, etc. Of course, this fact is not lost on the leading consultancies and SI partners, who have responded quickly with "SOA CoEs" (Centers of Excellence), coalescing this expertise for their SOA practices.
Joe concludes his post with a quote from the Wintergreen report that conveys some of the current and potential pervasiveness of SOA. "SOA reaches into every industry and every segment of the economy and represents a fundamental change in the way automated process is delivered to replace manual process. Service enabling offerings are a response to the fundamental change in IT, where enterprise competitive advantage is gained from having IT flexibility."
This is a game changer, and we are still only in the first half. Now, if we are going to call "SOA" something else by 2015, that's another matter...
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