At the beginning of this year Anne Thomas Manes wrote in her blog "SOA has become a bad word. It must be removed from our vocabulary".
She said that SOA turned into a great failed experiment and did not deliver it expected benefits. Almost half a year later it’s time to check whether we really removed this word from our vocabulary. Let’s have a look at Google trends and compare software as a service (SaaS), cloud computing and SOA.
This looks like there is still a viral interest in SOA.
I know that this is not really a criterion whether SOA is dead or not, but it shows that SOA is not overhyped any longer and comes into a phase where people really understand the core concepts of the topic.
What else can we learn from the Google trend graphic? Although the news reference volume published about SOA is stagnating, the search volume almost kept stable. This much follows Gartner's hype cycle, which basically consists of 5 phases. I think we are now in phase four which is entitled “Slope of enlightenment”. That means although the press has stopped to discuss the topic, some business continues and starts to understand the benefits and practical application of the hyped topic.
When do you think will SOA reach the fifth phase called “Plateau of Productivity” or do you think I am completely wrong and I am just seeing the ghost of SOA.
