Software architecture firms bet big on India

With Indian business looking for quick and cost-effective ways to respond to changing global market conditions, service-oriented architecture (SOA) providers expect the technology's adoption to rise 10-to 20-fold in two to three years.

SOA is an architectural approach to constructing complex software-intensive systems from a set of universally interconnected and interdependent building blocks called services. Software revenue for SOA providers, according to Gartner's analysis, is expected to grow to $142 billion by 2011.

It was about $41 billion in 2006. A Sprinboard Research report predicts the SOA market in India to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49 per cent from 2006 to 2009 - making it the fastest growing SOA market in the Asia-Pacific region in the process. Companies adopting SOA spend $1.4 million each on software and services on an average a year.

“As organisations become more global, SOA will become an integral part of their strategy. It is aimed at lowering the total cost of ownership, simplifying integration and customisation. Organisations are increasingly embracing SOA as a means to access and distribute information in real time,” explains Liladhar Bagad, practice head (enterprise-SOA), Intelligroup.

Intelligroup sees a big opportunity in countries like India, where enterprise application adoption through standard software has started growing rapidly.

Whether it is SAP enterprise resource planning for large enterprises or business-by-design for mid-size segment, SOA will be given at the core in these applications along with the standard enterprise services bus or repository.

The company expects about 20 per cent (300 companies) of the larger SAP customers in India to adopt SOA over the next one year, he adds.

Udaya Bhaskar, general manager (enterprise architecture and consulting), Wipro Technologies, points out that the North America and UK markets are currently leading in the adoption of SOA and will do so for a couple of years more.

“As a global services provider, Wipro will increasingly see business in geographies like India, West Asia and Australia in SOA consulting, enterprise SOA-enabled packaged applications and development of new applications in the SOA space in the next two to four years,” he says.

Ramesh Loganathan, vice-president (products) and managing director of Progress Software in India, says, "SOA adoption has gone from the hype part of the technology curve to the mainstream adoption part and a lot of money is being spent on both infrastructure and tools as well as in building the SOA services and processes. However, most of this adoption still seems to be in the localised scenario of specific business flows or visibility requirements. This would require a serious change in the mindset of developers and IT operation teams across the whole enterprise."

Chandika Mendis, director and head (global technology office), Virtusa Corporation, however, cautions that if the many promises being made about the potential of SOA don't pan out, it may prompt cries of disappointment.

“The reason for the disappointment will be due to taking a much narrowed approach while defining SOA, which could lead to failure of implementations. Also, the initial investment in SOA is high and will reap benefits slowly as the entire enterprise moves to it, which is a fairly long journey,” Mendis says.