Life has never been easier for IT departments: these days business processes can be automated with ease by linking together applications via Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). All the old complexities of integrating legacy applications, new technologies and external entities have disappeared with the SOA revolution and IT managers can really focus on delivering the value to the businesses that is expected of them.

Or so you might be led to believe. The reality is, of course, rather different and messages about SOA are most likely to fall on deaf ears. While most of the few organisations that have managed to turn their IT infrastructure into a service-orientated one have no doubt about the value of having done so, the majority still need educating about the fundamentals. VARs pushing their customers to evolve towards SOA will need to be in the front line helping to communicate this.

In a recent survey the following definition was used to raise the level of understanding among businesses about SOAs.

“SOA is a technical environment where business flexibility is supported through the use of technical components or services that can be re-used and brought together to form additional, composite services that work in accordance with pre-defined security, service level and other policies to facilitate business processes.”

The survey covered both business and IT management in enterprises across Europe, North America and Asia. The results showed the degree to which the individuals who make IT investment decisions still lack an understanding of what SOA is and the degree to which it can make the use of IT more efficient and allow business processes to be more easily automated and restructured.

More than 50 per cent of business respondents and about 25 per cent of IT respondents had no knowledge of what SOA was and therefore the benefits that could be derived from evolving towards one. Less than 10 per cent of IT respondents said they knew all about SOAs through having experience of impleme nting one. In the survey these leaders were termed gurus and their views were, not surprisingly quite different from those who were yet to see the light.

More than 85 per cent of SOA gurus considered their SOA to be critical or highly important to their organisation. Once their IT infrastructure had evolved to become service orientated, they could not imagine living without it. They also believed that any perceived problems with SOA were surmountable.

There is nothing new about the concepts behind SOA. Most organisations have at least some of the required components in place, including application servers, business applications that are web-service enabled, IP networks and open and secure communication channels with their customers, suppliers and other partners.

What many organisations lack are the skills, understanding, vision and time to make it happen. The IT world is good at making things sound more complex than they really are. SOA is little more than a well-integrated IT infrastructure that allows processes to be readily implemented and changed. Many VARs will have the vision to help their customers achieve this, and if those customers can be convinced of the benefits they will pay for the skills and the time.