SOA poised to explode—or not?

 By W David Gardner

Gartner is predicting big growth this year for applications designed around a service-oriented architecture, estimating 50 percent of new critical applications and processes will be SOA-based in 2007, and as many as 80 percent of these new initiatives will be designed around SOA by 2010.

The analyst firm was careful to note, however, that the early crop of SOA software has disappointed customers with respect to reliability, performance and overall immaturity.

Perhaps the bigger problem is that Gartner falls into the trap of relying on an overbroad definition of SOA. All the major development platform vendors are building some form of SOA compatibility into their products, so apps developed with them are likely to be service-enabled anyway. It would be a much bolder forecast if Gartner predicted strong growth in specific product categories—like enterprise service bus-driven apps, for instance.