Advising on the commercial impact of technology and
    market changes in telecoms, software and IT services

Although companies began deploying IT decades ago in an attempt to boost their efficiencies and competitiveness, IT managers still struggled to support their company's true business agenda. Emerging dynamic computing technologies such as SOA (service-oriented architecture), Web services, virtualization and grids are helping IT turn the tide and create flexible and fluid IT environments that adapt rapidly to support evolving business processes and service requirements. SOAs are becoming the consensus mechanism for delivering this IT agility, and vendors may succeed or fail based on their ability to capitalize on the demand for SOA-focused products and services.

This module analyzes the SOA strategies of the major infrastructure vendors, assesses the benefits and challenges associated with early SOA deployments and tracks the evolution of critical SOA-enablement standards and technologies (including middleware integration and virtualization, grid computing, Web services, data integration and other foundations that support modular and adaptable applications and business processes).

Key Research Topics

• How the rise of Web services and SOA-based computing is introducing new IT management and governance challenges and requirements
• What technical and business challenges and benefits customers are finding when moving from tightly coupled, client-server and legacy environments to loosely coupled SOA environments, and the roadmaps they are following in pursuit of this shift
• How the major infrastructure vendors are trying to differentiate their SOA products and capabilities even as they all work with the same set of Web services specifications and other SOA-related standards
• How the adoption of SOA environments will affect traditional middleware licensing models and sales/distribution channels
• How major vendors are aligning with different types of technology and professional services partners to create compelling ecosystems addressing the wide range of requirements that SOA implementations pose.

Ovum Summit's Unique Perspective

We were at the vanguard of recognizing the importance of XML-based Web services and have closely tracked these standards-and the strategies of the vendors driving them-as they've come to form the underpinnings of broad service-oriented architectures. By leveraging our understanding of key vendor objectives as well as our insight into the experiences of SOA early adopters, you can use this research to help you:

• Assess the strengths and weaknesses of SOA competitors and identify SOA partners that can help fill portfolio gaps
• Draw the connection between modular, flexible SOA environments and high value business benefits
• Navigate the ever-shifting SOA territory to understand current and future customer requirements as well as problem areas in your own positioning and strategies
• Validate value propositions, competitive positioning and go-to-market messaging.

SOA Infrastructure Strategies is for major systems, software and professional services vendors that must establish SOA as a key-and, very possibly, central-element in their development, marketing and partnering initiatives; smaller vendors that address specific areas in the SOA environment, and/or that must either work with the larger vendors or be acquired by them to successfully compete in the emerging SOA marketplace; and IT and business managers who need to understand the benefits and challenges associated with the SOA phenomenon.