If there was one core message that emerged from Information Age’s recent survey and reader debate on enterprise software policy, it was this: infrastructure flexibility is key to maintaining competitive edge.

However, not everyone agrees on the best way to achieve that agility. While many consultants and software suppliers are actively encouraging their clients to move all of their software activities to a service-oriented architecture (SOA), the Information Age survey found that only half of the respondent organisations are pursuing that flexibility with SOA.

So what differentiates the companies that are investing in SOA from those who aren’t? According to IT industry analyst group Forrester Research, whose own research mirrors this 50/50 split between the SOAs and the SOA-nots, the crucial difference lies in IT infrastructure complexity. Those organisations that have recently added new technology to their IT stacks, the argument runs, have a more immediate need for the application manageability and flexibility that is afforded by SOA.

“As firms invest more in emerging technologies, IT complexity and integration requirements increase, causing them to see the need for SOA sooner,” writes Forrester analyst Randy Hoffner.

Businesses that employ a relatively large number of IT staff are more likely to be planning or implementing an SOA, Hoffner’s research found. This confirms that the more businesses already do with technology, the more likely they are to adopt SOA, he argues.

In-house application development was the top rated software utility for bringing business benefits, Information Age‘s survey found. And the advent of SOA is likely to enforce this view: according to Gartner analyst Michael Blechar, the in-house development capacity will be pivotal to the success of any SOA project.

Developing situation

As the business radically redesigns its processes in response to changing market conditions, it will be up to the in-house developers to ensure that the IT supporting those processes can change just as fast.

This, argues Blechar, will demand a new generation of application development suites in which “business services and components will be deployed into the established application portfolio ecosystem. For this to happen, a new and broader business process platform must be established.”

But while the development capability is likely to become more important once a company has rolled out SOA, that is not to say it will be more of a drain on resources. According to Forrester analysts Ken Vollmer and Mike Gilpin, the component reuse methodology of SOA application development could reduce application costs by 30%.

The upshot is that worldwide spending on service-oriented architectures is about to explode, according to market analyst IDC. Global businesses spent a combined $4.4 billion on SOA software and services in 2005; IDC predicts that figure will reach $38 billion in 2009, a compound annual growth rate of 88% – all spent in pursuit of infrastructure flexibility.

Further reading

• Flexible pursuits - the current shape of software architectures and applications within the enterprise
• The new software landscape - enterprise software is increasingly capable of supporting business agility