The emerging trend in the enterprise software segment

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

Mar. 5, 2007

Increasingly today, SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is a growing trend in the enterprise software segment. Within industry circles, it's known to be one of the most effective ways to overcome IT complexities at businesses that need to be flexible and adapt to dynamic market conditions.

Nasscom, as well as other market researchers believe that SOA as a contemporary IT trend will yield some interesting benefits in the near future.

On average, IDC predicts that the market for SOA, including software, services and hardware, could potentially reach $21 billion this year alone. According to Springboard Research the SOA market in India is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 47.1 percent from 2007 to 2009, making it the fastest growing market in that country.

More and more today, Web services are suitable components for implementing SOA. In essence, Web services are self-describing and modular applications that expose business logic as services that are published, discovered and utterly invoked over the Internet.

"While Web services can be an important technological component of SOA, Web services are not SOA," says Akshay Aggarwal, head of systems engineering at BEA Systems. SOA, on the other hand, is neither a technology nor a product, but an architectural approach. SOA extends Web services capabilities by guiding the creation of structures of services, while benefiting from the open standards model that Web services provide.

“Web services and their related standards do not, in and of themselves, solve some of the important challenges of SOA like the management of specific IT services and other infrastructure that are required to support those services.

“While implementing Web services is a definite step towards the adoption of SOA, enterprises need to develop an effective governance structure for managing their Web services environment to foster reuse and adoption of standards,” believes Arnab Ghosh, CTO, Torry Harris Business Solutions.

“SOA is not about technology. You cannot buy SOA, you have to do it. It’s a style of architecture underpinned by key skills, ecosystem, industry know how and infrastructure. You need to think of it as a shift in the way you architect your IT environment," says R. Dhamodaran, Director, IBM India.

An SOA approach better aligns IT with business goals and enables IT organizations to re-use assets, deliver value, and support ongoing requirements for change. A CIO is faced with challenges such as enhancing business value from existing IT infrastructure, TCO and ROI on IT infrastructure. That is why business agility is a prime driver of SOA deployment. What's more, mergers and acquisitions will also accelerate SOA adoption in India.

James Smith Jr., vice-president and general manager, Customer Service Applications Division at Avaya Global Connect, believes, the reason that SOA is being discussed in every boardroom is that it has the potential to increase the agility of an enterprise’s operations by improving the ability of IT departments to respond to changing market and business needs.

“The pace of the business in India is moving faster than ever before. With customers, partners and employees expecting higher-quality service 24/7, it’s a challenge for enterprises to cater to this need. Hence, an SOA approach can be extremely effective, as it helps an enterprise improve operational efficiency, customer responsiveness and business agility,” believes Aggarwal.

"Re-writing applications all over again isn't an option! What is needed is a carefully calibrated SOA adoption path that factors in reuse of existing IT assets," says Akila Krishnakumar, CEO, SunGard.

In India, the manufacturing, banking and telecom industry are likely to adopt SOA in a very big way. Apart from this, the thrust on eGovernance will also help advance the case for SOA in that country. Gartner estimates that more than 60 percent of enterprises will use SOA as a guiding principle when creating mission critical platforms by next year.

“Companies in India have one of the highest awareness levels in the field of SOA and its benefits. But despite a much higher awareness of SOA, the number of companies planning to deploy SOA in India still is less than that in China, where awareness levels are much lower,” said Ravi Shekhar Pandey, Senior Analyst at Springboard Research.

Pandey added “it's not surprising that India’s pools of IT literate professionals understand the latest technologies in the market such as SOA. However, their efforts to implement new technologies are often held back by management teams less familiar with the latest technologies or how they can increase ROI.”

System integrators in India are providing offshore services and local ISVs have also been quick to include SOA in their business plans. IT service providers like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Ramco Systems, Satyam, HCL Technologies, Polaris Software, Cognizant Technologies and Patni Computers are building SOA capabilities.

Overall, a fair number of ISVs are working with leading SOA platform vendors to integrate SOA capabilities to their applications, and many are developing whole new applications based on SOA frameworks.

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

Source: Web Services.org

Have your website professionally optimized by the search engine positioning experts at Rank for $ales. If your site has dropped in rankings since November 16, 2003, contact the search engine positioning experts at Rank for Sales.

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

For the best technical information on hardware, software, Internet applications, e-Commerce, B2B, Web services or IT-related industry news, visit Tech Blog.

Reciprocal Link Exchange Program: If your company is engaged in the business of Web Services, the development of related Internet application, ecommerce or B2B development, Internet security services, Web hosting services or is involved in professional Search Engine Optimization, My Web Services is seriously interested in a worthwhile Reciprocal Link Exchange Trading Program with your company. Click here to get all the details.

Sponsored by Internet Trends      Sponsored by LCWHG      Sponsored by ISEN

Powered by W. W. H.         Protected by Internet Security.ca         Sponsored by Marketing Trends

Built by Montreal Web Design        Sponsored by Press Broadcast        Sponsored by Businessblog™

Have your advertorials and infomercials written by experts.