Service Infrastructure
Moving SOA from Pilot to Production
Every major transition in the technology industry brings with it a wave of new software categories. The transition from mainframes to client-server brought us relational databases, rapid application development tools and several new categories of enterprise business applications. The Internet era brought us the pervasive web browser for easy access to distributed information, as well as application servers to deliver that information and virtual machines to make underlying technologies transparent.

As the industry embarks on its latest transition to "Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)," we will inevitably discover new software categories that use standards-based platforms and enterprise-wide architectures to provide a common technology infrastructure for today's business. Many of those categories are still early in the development phase, but BEA's day-to-day experience and in-depth research with thousands of customers suggest that one of those categories will be "Service Infrastructure" — a new framework comprised of independent SOA platforms that enable the free flow of business processes, information and services across and between businesses.

Business Readiness for SOA


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BEA Systems has been working with thousands of customers over the past two years, as they start to work through the transition from client-server and Internet architectures to SOA. Many of these early adopters have done the heavy lifting through multiple pilot projects, which they hope will give them an early advantage in moving to SOA. What BEA has learned is that SOA is a very real phenomenon, driven by business and IT motivations, typically managed by an emerging group of "architects," and will require new service-oriented software to fully deliver on the vision.

To bring this insight to the market, BEA is releasing its findings from more than 1,000 "readiness tests" and 500+ customer surveys worldwide - which together represent the most comprehensive assessment of business SOA readiness to date.

Key findings include:

27% are already in the process of adopting SOA, nearly 33% of those enterprise-wide.
63% rank SOA as a Critical/High Priority for their business over the next 3 years.
Despite high adoption rates and plans, "familiarity" with SOA rated 1.76 on a scale of 1 to 4, reflecting "basic understanding" rather than "very advanced" knowledge of SOA.
SOA is viewed as critical to solving long-term pains for both business and IT. More than 90% cited business drivers like improved service to customers, partners and employees, greater operational efficiency and reduced complexity. More than 88% cited IT drivers including lower maintenance and integration costs, more efficient application and project development, management and re-use and more flexible/adaptable infrastructure.
"Architects" are leading the charge, but SOA projects involve many levels of business and IT management. More than 29% of survey participants designated themselves as architects — clearly a growing designation within IT ranks. Meanwhile, CIOs and C-level executives were as likely to participate in the SOA readiness survey as IT directors and managers.
A "Vision vs. Reality" gap exists between C-level and executive respondents and their deployment teams. The four categories of C-level, VP, director and manager respondents were each above 1.73 (on 1-4 scale) assessing their SOA readiness, while developers, engineers, consultants and systems analysts rated readiness at 1.67 or below.
The two biggest "holes" in SOA readiness were availability of "building blocks" to make SOA more productive and scalable, and the inability to quantify "costs and benefits" of SOA projects at this early stage.

Customers are gravitating to SOA because of its modularity and flexibility, which allows them to mix and match IT resources in a "virtual" infrastructure that is integrated while not being locked into a single vendor's IT stack. It also reflects the move from thinking about IT in an "application" context to thinking about IT as a "services" delivery business — enabling IT departments to create, assemble and deliver new services more quickly for use by employees, customers, partners and suppliers. As a new approach to enterprise IT implementation and application development, SOA breaks down business applications and features into "services" — specific pieces of functionality — which can be efficiently built, combined, adapted and reused.

Most customers to date are using their application infrastructure software (application servers, integration servers, development tools and portal software) to build and deploy their early SOA projects. As SOA moves from pilot to production, however, BEA and its customers are finding that they need a new type of software infrastructure that allows them to quickly compose, deliver, configure and manage these services. Customers typically encounter this need once they have built and deployed more than 50 services, which can result in a "services sprawl" that requires constant integration and can be difficult to scale. They also need a new set of composition tools that are more akin to an "assembly line" for building cars, in addition to the traditional coding tools they have used for "building car parts."

To address these needs, BEA envisions a new category of "Service Infrastructure" software that enables the free flow of processes, information and services across and between businesses. Based on a Service-Oriented Architecture, we believe it will include all the products and tools to enable services that can be composed once and leveraged anywhere (COLA). Primarily used by IT and business architects, the software will help IT overcome its long-standing $200 billion integration problem and respond faster to the rhythm of business.

The Market for Service Infrastructure
While "Service Infrastructure" may be a new term, it combines several existing software tools and component products that reflect the growing movement to SOA and Web services. Together, these products are estimated by analysts to become a $7 billion software market by 2008, which make Service Infrastructure the fastest-growing category of enterprise software. This market is distinct from and additional to the "Application Infrastructure" market, which provides the server software foundation for building and deploying enterprise applications.

Over time, BEA believes the Service Infrastructure category will include all the capabilities for full operation and lifecycle management of business and IT services across heterogeneous environments, including: messaging backbone; data integration services; user interface services; security framework; business process management; web services management; services repository and integrated configuration environment.

What's Next for Service Infrastructure
As the pioneer and market leader for Application Infrastructure, BEA is uniquely positioned to deliver the independent platforms for Service Infrastructure that will help make SOA a reality for customers. We have been hard at work with our customers providing expert consultation, helping develop and deploy services, and building out the capabilities required for Service Infrastructure. Equally as important, unlike vendors who have a vested interest in their database, application and operating system platforms, we can provide our customers with the independent platforms and broad integration they need to knit together diverse technology environments — an independence which becomes even more critical in the world of SOA.

It's clear that much more is needed as customers move beyond Application Infrastructure needs. To that end, BEA will unveil a new suite of products in mid-2005 — all designed to deliver on customer needs for Service Infrastructure, provide the on-ramp for moving SOA from pilot to production, and enable the services "assembly line" that enables IT to finally match the rhythm of business.