Service-Oriented Architecture Consulting

Key Findings:

  • Today’s professional services firms are struggling to find their long-term value proposition in environments that are in constant change. There is a significant opportunity for PSOs in the short-term for helping companies implement and adopt SOAs, and in the long-term for providing critical business process expertise.
  • As Service-oriented process tools mature, system integration will no longer be a separate activity, but will be subsumed into the process orchestration and choreography activities within the Service-oriented process tools.
  • The business process design, optimization, and execution consulting market will come to displace the system integration market.
  • System integrators will find the low-level integration work diminishing as their customers adopt SOAs, and therefore will need to transition their skills to the Service-oriented process arena to avoid having their market erode substantially.
  • There is a significant opportunity for consulting firms in the next five years for helping companies implement and adopt SOAs, and in the long-term for providing critical business process expertise.
  • Total SOA architectural and process consulting revenues will surpass those from system integration by 2006.
  • System integration revenue by professional services organizations will decrease by over 70% by 2010, while Service-Oriented Business Process consulting will increase 20-fold in the same time period.

Table of Contents:

  • I. Report Scope
    • 1.1. Methodology
  • II. The Context for SOA Consulting
    • 2.1. The Difference between Web Service and SOA engagements
    • 2.2. SOA Practice Contexts
    • 2.3. Meeting Customer Needs
    • 2.4. Raising the Perception of Architecture
  • III. Conducting an SOA Engagement
    • 3.1. Selling an SOA Engagement
    • 3.2. Getting a Foot in the Door
    • 3.3. Aspects of SOA Engagements
    • 3.4. Technology Selection Considerations
  • IV. Adopting an SOA
    • 4.1. Justifying an SOA Engagement
    • 4.2. SOA Enterprise Adoption Roadmap
    • 4.3. Managing an SOA Engagement
  • V. Partnering with a Professional Services Organization
    • 5.1. Partnership Value Proposition
    • 5.2. Partnership Landscape
  • VI. Current State of the Market
    • 6.1. Market Segmentation
    • 6.2. Adoption Picture
    • 6.3. Examples of SOA Engagements
  • VII. Market Trends. Opportunities and Risks
    • 7.1. Compensation for the Standards Gap
    • 7.2. Long-term Shifts in Demand
    • 7.3. SOAs as the Key to the Real Time/On Demand Enterprise
  • VIII. Conclusions
    • 8.1. Key Notes
    • 8.2. Decision Points
    • 8.3. Figures
    • 8.4. Tables
  • IX. Profiled Professional Services Organizations
    • 9.1. Small Architectural Consulting Firms
    • 9.2. Small IT Consulting Firms
    • 9.3. Midsize IT Consulting Firms
    • 9.4. Large IT Consulting Firms
    • 9.5. Small/Midsize Full-Service PSOs
    • 9.6. Large Full-Service PSOs
    • 9.7. Software Vendors