To maximize the intended benefits of service-oriented architecture (SOA) implementations, organizations need to develop a well-articulated SOA Quality strategy to promote trust and reuse, according to new research from leading analyst firm Hurwitz & Associates. The report, titled “Executive Survey: SOA Implementation Satisfaction,” authored by Carol Baroudi and Dr. Fern Halper, confirms the top drivers for SOA adoption include the expectation of greater reuse in existing and newly-built Web services, business flexibility, ease of integration and speed of integration – with nearly 90% of respondents pointing to service reuse as their number one concern.

“The Hurwitz research suggests that organizations that implement a SOA and have a quality plan in place are more likely to be completely satisfied with the quality of their SOA,” said report co-author, Carol Baroudi of Hurwitz & Associates. “Creating a viable SOA is contingent on the ability to ensure quality and gain trust. Without an articulated quality strategy rigorously enforced, companies will be hard-pressed to scale their SOA implementations and realize the intended benefits.”

In September and October of 2006, Hurwitz & Associates surveyed ninety-nine IT executives from companies in North America and the UK with a size greater than 250 employees who had expressed an interest in SOA or Web services. Approximately two-thirds of respondents surveyed (66%) had begun their SOA journey. The research notes that nearly half (47%) of the respondents, who had implemented SOA cited some dissatisfaction with their reuse due to a lack of planning and business goals and a lack of understanding of what services are available for reuse. Lack of governance and lack of standards also contributed to dissatisfaction with SOA implementations. Respondents who had implemented a SOA and had a quality plan in place were more likely to be completely satisfied with the quality of their SOA.

The independent research was sponsored by Mindreef®, Inc., a provider of award winning SOAPscope® and SOAPscope ServerTM solutions for Web services testing and SOA quality. Teams at Wachovia, Fidelity National Financial, Charles Schwab, IBM, Valero Energy, and more than 3,000 customers at over 1,200 organizations worldwide use Mindreef products to successfully build, test, and maintain high-quality Web services and SOAs. The resulting trust in high-quality services leads to increased adoption and reuse of Web services throughout the SOA.

“We firmly believe that SOA Quality is achieved through continual optimization of all components within an SOA environment to ensure maximum adoption, business agility and service reuse,” said Frank Grossman, co-founder and president of Mindreef. “The research underscores the importance of SOA Quality as a key component of reaping the intended benefits of an SOA – it’s the strategy needed to achieve maximum business benefit – and that companies will be more satisfied if they implement a well-articulated plan to drive pervasive quality throughout their SOA initiatives, to obtain the agility and reuse that yield a significant and immediate ROI.”