Service-Oriented Architecture

The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) marketplace is comprised of software offerings that employ service-oriented practices. In this way, SOA constantly evolves in accordance with customer needs, inventing new and absorbing existing technologies that best demonstrate SOA best practices. For example, though borrowing from directory services, the concept of registries and repositories evolved within the SOA marketplace primarily as a means for managing services and enforcing policies. Conversely, through acquisition, SOA vendors have worked to converge what were separate marketplaces surrounding business process management (BPM), business activity monitoring (BAM), data management (DM) and business intelligence (BI).

In general, the SOA market is concerned with the development, deployment, management, and optimization of software forming a fabric of loosely coupled business services in which distinct services can be brought together within broader, composite applications such that each service can be re-used within subsequent composite applications. These life-cycle functions require software products that are often marketed as a single suite, though through standards adherence, most can be purchased and employed as best-of-breed point solutions. In addition to registries/repositories and BPM/BAM listed above, a typical SOA solution contains a development environment for the creation and deployment of services, various application servers that support these services at run-time, a portal or other interface for user interaction, and a series of orchestration as well as a number of administration, monitoring and governance tools.

Presently, the SOA market is dominated by vendors focused on bundling these various applications within an SOA suite or collection of highly integrated but best-of-breed products at the center of which resides an enterprise service bus (ESB) as a foundational middleware platform upon which more complex architectures can be built. There are still pure-play vendors focusing on ESBs. However, through acquisition and internal development, these vendors too are striving to provide a complete SOA environment. Most central vendors in this market space have incorporated some form of open source software components as a means to technological innovation or direct revenue through support services or upgrades into licensed software. The overall market is also broadening to include vendors focused on SOA management, governance, development and performance. Vendors are also innovating through the adoption of advanced application and data delivery mechanisms via Web 2.0 technologies and software-as-a-service (SaaS).

Market Review Highlights

► SaaS and SOA Move Closer Together

► Vendors Embrace Pre-built Software for Vertical Markets

► Virtualization Poised to reach into The Application Layer:

► Modeling Plays a Dominant Role

► Strong Interest in Open Source Continues

► Data Management Becomes an Imperative

Near-Term Market Driver Highlights

► Repositories Play More Active Governance Role

► Web 2.0 Reshapes SOA Solutions

► SOA Momentum Continues with Industry-specific ROI as Focal Point

► Telecom Providers Enter the Fray

► SOA Performance Management Will Become Focal Point

► SOA Management and Integration Moves into the Cloud

Long-Term Market Driver Highlights

► Business, Not IT, Drives SOA Evolution

► Open Source Vendors Play Significant Role

► Improving Internal Business Processes

► Standards-based Platforms Dominate

► Community Reshapes SOA

► Hardware and Software SOA Combine

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