Although still in the nascent phase of its adoption by
corporate IT, take-up of service oriented architecture is becoming
more widespread among businesses, according the Computer Weekly CIO
Index.
Our second quarterly survey revealed that SOA is now implemented
at a departmental level in 16% of businesses, compared with 9% when
the survey was launched in April. And 19% of businesses are
piloting SOA technologies, compared to 15% in the first set of
findings.
SOA is the latest in a long line of technologies designed to
help IT managers attain the holy grail of enterprise application
integration. It allows IT staff to publish the functions of an
application as a web service, letting other applications make use
of those functions.
This can benefit the business by integrating information from
different applications, thereby giving selected users a better view
of how their organisation operates. Or it can simply reduce
overheads by cutting duplicated functions from a group of
applications.
This latter objective was the goal of P&O Ferries when it
embarked in March on a pilot SOA project it believes will pay for
itself within two years.
Applications designed to perform tourist reservations, freight
booking and passenger check-in had much in common, P&O said.
"Each of the three applications has its own pricing system, ship
inventory management, sailing services and credit card
authorisation. There was a huge amount of duplication," the firm
said.
But despite the industry hype around SOA, many IT managers are
wary of the technology. Thirty five per cent have taken no action
on SOA, compared with 47% in April.
IT decision makers are taking a similarly cautious approach to
other technologies that are relatively new to business.
With multimillion-pound backing from IBM and Hewlett-Packard,
open source technologies, including the Linux operating system, had
been expected to make major inroads into business IT. However,
growth in their use has been modest.
Open source software is now used at a departmental level or
across the company by 24% of businesses. This compares with 19% in
April.
However, voice over IP, a technology that promises a radical
reduction in telephony overheads, as well as services such as
unified messaging, is making better headway.
The latest CIO Index survey found it is used by 44% of
businesses at least at a departmental level, with a further 17%
undertaking pilot studies. This compares with a deployment level of
40% in our April survey.
Microsoft once believed the pen-based interface of the tablet PC
would create the same sort of revolution in the way people interact
with computers as the point-and-click graphical user interface.
However, IT departments are proving slow to adopt the
technology. Uptake has stagnated, with adoption staying at about
20% and piloting at 18%. The proportion of those reviewing the
potential of the technology has fallen to 12% from 17%.
About the Computer Weekly CIO index
The CIO Index is Computer Weekly's quarterly online survey of IT
directors in the Computer Weekly 500 Club. The research is
conducted by our parent company Reed Business Information's market
research department, strictly adhering to the Market Research
Society's code of conduct.
In the technology adoption report, respondents graded their
replies to a statement according to five categories: full
deployment across the business, used in one or more departments,
pilot studies, reviewing potential and no action taken. Between 129
and 132 IT directors responded to each question.
In addition to tracking technology adoption in UK businesses,
the CIO Index highlights trends and provides analysis of key
metrics for IT expenditure and the business readiness of emerging
technologies.
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