SOA continues to move
forward, and judging by the headcount at the latest IBM Impact SOA event we attended, it shows no sign of waning in popularity.
Eric Roch recently discussed a TechTarget survey in his post, SOA
Survey Points to Practical Approaches. He wrote that the
survey results indicate that the top SOA benefits organizations aim for are
improved data integration (32%), enable legacy application integration (32%)
and integrated disparate department applications (23%). These are very
practical approaches to more cost effective data management and IT operations. Integration
plays to SOA’s strengths, but also ups the stakes for automated testing, as we have
discussed here a bit. You have more heterogeneity, more integration points and more change than ever - and we are far beyond the point where manual or UI testing approaches can succeed. These
dependencies are also dynamic, so you need constant validation of business outcomes.
BPM is the next most common SOA application, with an indication that its use will grow, as 38% of the subjects are planning to use it in the future. The survey also provides another data source to suggest that SOA is not dead as 49% of the respondents said their organization has one or more SOA projects under way. In addition, it is becoming more strategic as 60% characterize their current or future SOA projects as enterprise level as opposed to operating simply at the departmental/divisional level (21%), or single, isolated projects (19%).
We have repeatedly seen SOA used for cost reduction efforts around the integration of distributed systems and improvement of business processes. Eric calls this "SOA blocking and tackling," and says a great deal of it remains to be done. Automated testing and validation provides the means ensure that SOA meets business goals, while virtualization eliminates service constraints in the environment, so testing and validation can continue.
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