SOA maturity as a litmus test of EA maturity

Leo: It seems that SOA maturity cannot be measured in isolation. It is connected to a variety of IT governance issues. SOA maturity is a good indicator of EA maturity.

Technology driven SOA

Leo: The reality is that a lot of SOA efforts seem to start bottom up. Technologists recognize that there need to more organized/manageable data integration patterns across the enterprise. The service bus concept is very compelling. So SOA initiatives can start as attemts to integrate enterprise data exchanges via a service bus.

Lack of adoption of standards

Leo: One surprising result of the survey seems to be the lack of adoption of vertical standards (PESC, IMS). This probably warrants deeper investigation.  In 2 cases institutions backed out of using standards because the complexity.

Small is beautiful

Leo: From the title of the Schumacher book Small is beautiful . Although the practice of SOA ranges from very high-level governance practices to complex technologies, the reality is that small, simple technologies that facilitate integration seem to prevail. Examples:

  1. JAX-WS and JAX-B are ubiquitous. But no one seems to use WS-Transaction (too complicated?)
  2. Maybe the apparent lack of adoption of vertical standards is connected with the complexity of those standards?  In the words of the UW architects: "the semantic impedance was too great"
  3. Although many institutions are experimenting with SOA suites and ESB's, KSB appears more often than any other (even though everyone says this cannot/should not be an enterprise strategy)

We can be our own worst critics

Rich: Often we can be very self-critical and this should be taken into account when we look at the low scores around SOA maturity