SOA adoption to soar through increased IT spending

Details: Michael Schwartz; Category: Trends & Forecasts; 16 April 2007; 10433 views

Asia-Pacific is witnessing major and rapid growth in demand for IT. One consequent question is whether the region is ready for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). According to analyst Frost and Sullivan demand for SOA is in its own turn due for no less than 40% growth in the next two years. Developing Telecoms summarises Frost and Sullivan's Asia-Pacific SOA Readiness Survey.

IT spending among enterprises in Asia-Pacific is growing rapidly. The emergence of enterprise integration and the need for flexible business processes is triggering extensive IT adoption, and driving the demand for service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a viable and popular option to achieve competent IT infrastructure.

New analysis from global growth consulting company Frost & Sullivan - Asia-Pacific SOA Readiness Survey - finds that the Asia-Pacific market is at the right stage for the adoption of SOA technologies. SOA adoption is expected to increase by 40% in the next two years as all major software vendors have been altering and creating software to suit the needs of an SOA framework.

Frost & Sullivan research analyst Harikrishna Subramanian observes that the Asia-Pacific SOA market is poised for healthy growth as large enterprises across all verticals are adopting SOA-based solutions for their business related issues. SOA offers solutions that optimise current business processes and efficiently plan future software adoptions of enterprises that are looking for continuous process improvement with clear visibility of the processes involved.

Parameters that contribute to IT-related problems, e.g., time since first IT deployment, number of software modules, and size of the enterprise, increase the influence of business needs that then drive the demand for SOA. With increasing complexity of software modules, the cost associated with implementing IT has also increased. SOA offers the means to economise software implementations in the long-run.

Software vendors in the region are registering double-digit growth rates, pointing towards a significant uptake of the different enterprise software modules, hence increasing the need for greater enterprise integration. In addition, the increasing penetration of Web services among enterprises in Asia-Pacific is encouraging the deployment of SOA.

What effect is SOA having?

The highly dynamic software market is witnessing a spate of mergers and acquisitions, which is also a significant driver for SOA adoption. However, the potential growth of the market is hampered by low awareness of SOA.

Enterprises are shying away from implementing fully-fledged SOA-based solutions, mainly due to limited IT budget and time constraints. Vendors must focus on educating clients about the benefits of SOA and showcase best practices in order to draw up an efficient roadmap for SOA implementation.

How will SOA be relevant?

Exhaustive implementation case studies and audits, coupled with extensive marketing campaigns on success stories, can greatly improve the likelihood of enterprises to consider SOA as a feasible and efficient solution for business issues, says Harikrishna Subramanian. Making clients understand how SOA can help align business needs and increase IT capability is crucial for the growth of this market.

The Asia-Pacific SOA Readiness Survey is part of the Frost & Sullivan IT Services & Applications subscription, which also includes research in SOA vendor and end-user assessment, hosted applications/software as a service (SAAS), enterprise software trends, and IT professional services. All research services included in subscriptions provide market opportunities and industry trends which have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Analyst interviews are available to the press.

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