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IT Staff Concerned with Federal Government's Slow SOA Adoption Rate

"With SOA, government agencies can continue to use the systems that work best for them and extend their lifetime, while avoiding costly 'rip and replace' strategies."

Results from a recent survey reveal that 78 percent of government IT staff are either "concerned" or "very concerned" about government organizations' slow pace to adopt service oriented architecture (SOA). The survey, administered by Micro Focus and completed by 68 federal government IT professionals attending FOSE 2008, also shows that 89 percent of respondents believe the private sector is outpacing government agencies in their adoption of SOA architectures.

While 93 percent of respondents believe that government agencies would benefit from a more proactive approach to SOA, government IT professionals are clearly frustrated by the lack of progress to date.

When asked why they think government organizations have been slow to embrace service oriented architectures, common answers included the "perception that change is difficult," a "lack of understanding about SOA benefits," and the "failure of senior management to support SOA" initiatives.

"Because of the success they've seen in the private sector, federal government agencies are just now starting to warm up to the idea of application modernization and are starting to develop SOA strategies," said Charles Krahling, vice president of channels at Micro Focus. "So many mission-critical applications and process are written in older, steady programming languages like COBOL, and government organizations must develop strategies to bring them into a SOA-enabled world. With SOA, government agencies can continue to use the systems that work best for them and extend their lifetime, while avoiding costly 'rip and replace' strategies."

Only 12 percent believe that the most effective SOA migration strategy would be to "rip and replace" their entire IT infrastructure and start over from scratch -- a strategy that would involve significant time, cost and resource commitments. Instead, 83 percent of respondents believe that the most effective strategy is to modernize existing, core systems and applications to allow them to operate in an SOA environment.