In its Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle 2005 Gartner has
identified service oriented architecture and Web services as having
a huge future impact on business.
But most systems in the enterprise are incapable of taking
advantage of SOA, says integration company Wax Digital, and a more
selective approach should be adopted.
Steve Thompson, product development team architect at Wax
Digital said, "In 80% of the businesses we work with people
transfer information by producing files and shipping them around by
FTP. Engineering Web services for such systems does not yet make
commercial sense, especially where, as is often the case, they are
likely to be replaced at some point.
"Most systems in use are years old and will never fit into the
Web services universe. Mix and match is the only option for most,
using enterprise service bus and business process management
software to take data and transform it for use by other apps.
"It's best to adopt a transitional approach with use of Web
services where appropriate, especially in building new
applications, but leveraging simpler communications in many," he
said.