Pam Baker

If you believe everything you hear, service-oriented architecture is taking over the world, and anyone not in the game is likely to be left on the sidelines. The move to SOA may indeed be inevitable, but it can be hard to accomplish in the current economic environment. Vendors are also struggling with heavy investments in SOA, and they, too, have to make a profit during this economic downturn. This begs the question of whether you truly need to score on the SOA front immediately-or are you just being played?

"Some vendors, those who were a bit too zealous regarding their expectations on volume and buy-in time lines, have ratcheted down the noise and focus on SOA," says Sandra Rogers, director of SOA, Web services and integration research at IDC Research (a sister company of CIO.com). "Meanwhile, other vendors-those who remain committed-are becoming a bit more realistic and mature about the pace and extent SOA will advance. Now they are [better] articulating how it can fit into overall IT strategies."

Whether you're from the "All Hail, it's SOA" cheerleading camp or the "oh hell, it's SOA" detractors squad, one thing's for sure: SOA is solidly rooted in the land of now. "SOA is not coming; it's here. There's a 99% chance some SOA has infiltrated your company already, whether or not you chose to go there," says Frank Kenney, research director at Gartner Research. "Just about every technology is built on SOA these days," he says.

SOA is touted for its efficiency and agility, and if at least some of the stuff is already in place, indeed in every place, why isn't anyone getting to clock out and go home early?