Surprisingly, 33% of organizations in Asia Pacific (APAC) have no plans for a service-oriented architecture (SOA), according to the newly released Oracle® Grid Index IV report, which polled perceptions on Grid Computing and other emerging technologies like SOA. Contrast this with only 5-10% of organizations in USA and Europe that have indicated the same, and the region’s competitive SOA position appears grim.
Similarly, the research shows that APAC lags in the actual adoption rate of SOAs. Only 5% of organizations polled in APAC have implemented an SOA -- compared to Europe (10%) and the USA (20%). Underlining the low adoption rate in APAC is the large portion of organizations (85%) with little or no working knowledge of SOAs. Across APAC, Southeast Asia has the lowest awareness of SOA; with 87% stating they have no awareness of SOAs.
“The awareness and education gap for Asia Pacific seems especially dire as companies cannot adopt what they don’t understand nor implement with any confidence of success,” said Clive Longbottom, Research Director, Quocirca. “The research seems to indicate, however, that Asia Pacific organizations value all the benefits that an SOA can bring, but simply lack hands-on experience.”
For example, more respondents in Asia Pacific (37%) than in the USA or Europe indicated a move in their IT infrastructure to enhance flexibility and to be supportive of the business. More respondents in APAC (38%) than in other regions indicated that consistency and re-use will be a part of the natural evolution of their IT. And more respondents in APAC (40%) have indicated usage of middleware to link existing systems together than in the USA or Europe.
“Flexibility, re-use, and consistency are hallmarks of an SOA, and have proven to be a competitive differentiator for leading companies in Asia Pacific such as China’s GuangDong Telecom, Hong Kong’s Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), Korea’s Hanjin Shipping, and Singapore’s YCH Group,” said Doug Gibson, Director, Service Oriented Architecture, Oracle Asia Pacific. “The flexibility that SOAs have given to organizations is truly a competitive edge in many industries. Organizations in Asia Pacific not looking at a service-oriented model will be handicapped when competing with global players.”
More than 84% of APAC’s SOA Gurus1 rated it as highly or critically important to the company’s future success, compared to 16% of total respondents who answered the same in APAC.
SOA Gurus also view manageability somewhat differently than the overall pool of respondents. In general, respondents in APAC stated that managing an SOA would either be “a nightmare” (8%) or predicted that a complete re-work of management tools would be needed (39%). In contrast, among SOA Gurus in APAC, none saw managing SOA as a nightmare and only 12% saw the need to replace existing management tools.
The majority of technologists (IT Respondents) indicated they had heard of SOA and more than half (57%) stated SOA is important, highly important or critical to their business. Additionally, the majority (52%) of technologists indicated they are already moving towards an SOA – either through a major migration to a single architecture, through ensuring that all new functionality is SOA-based, or through modernizing existing applications.
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