"IBM has taken an evolutionary approach to SOA, realizing that it has to be built on, and defined by a specific business strategy," said Ernest Lee, executive, Software Group, IBM China/Hong Kong. "Vendors can't sell an SOA to a customer-they can only sell software, hardware or services that support SOA functionality."

"Data from analyst firms-like Aberdeen Research and Forrester-demonstrate an increasing rise in SOA adoption," continued Lee, "predicting that the majority of companies will have developed SOA planning, design and programming experience this year, and that about half will be using SOA by year-end."

Lee said that as competitive forces increase, businesses will need to speed up SOA adoption to be able to better leverage information as a service by freeing it from closed and passive systems into active services that perform specific business functions. "SOA will come of age in 2007," declared Lee. "Analyst figures support this, predicting that global spending on SOA-based external services will experience triple-digit growth."

CIO agenda

"Our enterprise clients demand for proactive, predictive and real-time interaction with data, enabling them to free their operations from static information and pursue new uses of that information," said Lee. "They need to use existing information assets while proactively taking advantage of emerging information sources to gain a seamless flow of all forms of information-regardless of format, platform or location."