BPM vs SOA

In the battle of the TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms to you non-geeks), there seems to a sharp change in the fortunes of the old warhorse BPM (normally Business Process Management) against the upstart SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).

Over the last five years, SOA has been thrusting its way up the agenda of the chattering IT classes as being the Next Big Thing (or NBT in TLA-speak) for IT analysts and vendors to sell to hard pressed CIOs and IT Directors.  The fact that none of the previous NBTs have made a significant difference to their organisations (except additional cost) hasn't deterred people from trumpeting SOA as the latest snake oil.

So it may come as a surprise to some (not me, obviously - see previous blogs) to read Gartner's 2008 CIO Business and Technical Priority lists.  Top of the Business priorities is BPM.   However, SOA comes a distant 10th (and last) in the Technical priorities list, down 4 places from last year.  Oh dear.  What has happened?  Just as all the IT vendors have finished rebranding their existing products as SOA compliant/enabling/focussed, etc., their customers have binned that part of their IT strategy in favour of two old favourites - BPM and BI (that annoyingly Two Letter Acronym, Business Intelligence), which came top of the Technical Priorities.

My reading of this is that IT has spectacularly failed to articulate the benefits of SOA to their business sponsors.  I also think that a sizeable minority of CIOs were never seduced by SOA, or never fully believed the hype.  The resurgence of BPM and BI seems to be an indication that the business has become impatient with IT and are looking for tangible and quicker returns on their investments.  Given that the second and third Business Priorities are Customer Relations and innovation, there is an obvious emphasis on delivering real business value through more and happier customers being sold better products brought to more markets sooner. 

But isn't that what business is all about anyway?

John Moe