Demand For Software Integration Expected To Ease DramaticallyDemand For Software Integration Expected To Ease Dramatically

IT systems integration, often the biggest expense and headache in installing business software, will become considerably less of a problem over the next several years, a high-tech research firm predicts.

The adoption of service-oriented architectures based on emerging Web services standards will dramatically reduce the need to manually tie IT systems in order to automate business activities within an organization or between companies, according to ZapThink LLC.

"With Web services and services-oriented architectures, integration is going to be a function of software. It's going to be integrated out of the box," ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg said Thursday. "As a result, the whole business of systems integration is going to shift, because that's not going to be something that people will need to hire consultants to do in the next seven years or so."

Indeed, ZapThink predicts in a recent report that consulting revenue from work related to service-oriented architectures will surpass those from systems integration by 2006. Systems integration revenue overall is forecast to decrease by more than 70% by 2010, while consulting revenue related to automating business processes based on service-oriented architectures will increase 20-fold during the same period.

So what does this mean to companies that now spend millions on systems integrators? Well, they're unlikely to spend less, but they will get more for their money. IT systems based on a service-oriented architecture will be more flexible, which means companies will be able to change business processes quicker to respond to market changes or to implement business strategies.

Service-oriented architectures in general, "will save money and provide extensive value to enterprises," Bloomberg said. "SOAs are more efficient, more agile and flexible, and respond better to change."

Therefore, in evaluating companies that provide professional services, corporations should consider their expertise on emerging service-oriented architectures technologies, Bloomberg said.

Proponents of service-oriented architectures believe emerging web services technology will make it possible over the next several years for computer systems to discover a service on a network and connect to that service without human intervention.

Rather than building links between applications with proprietary software, Web services would provide standard interfaces for system-to-system integration over the Internet, making it possible for companies to publish application services available to customers and partners.

In that way, for example, a manufacturer could automate a business activity with a supplier by having their systems discover each other and make the necessary connections.