Demand for Service Oriented Architecture-Related Change Management Services Grows, but Transition Proves Challenging, IDC Says

Business Wire, Jan 16, 2007

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- The demand for organizational change management (CM) services related to service oriented architecture (SOA) is steadily increasing and will continue to grow in the coming years, a new study from IDC finds. As clients move up the SOA adoption curve and start to engage in broader enterprise-wide and more strategic engagements with a compounding level of business complexity, managing change with focus on the people and organizational factors becomes increasingly critical.

"Although this market is relatively nascent today, it is expected to become an important opportunity for service vendors in the next couple of years," said Marianne Hedin, program manager, Worldwide Services research. "By creating services that are configured to support business capabilities, organizations must change their modus operandi from transactions to business processes. As this requires a major paradigm shift, organizations must undergo transformational change from an organizational and sometimes even cultural perspective, including changes of employee roles and responsibilities as well as relationships between different functions within an enterprise."

This report also reveals that the transition to SOA is not always an easy one. Companies are realizing that implementing SOA means far more than addressing such tangible and relatively straightforward problems as integration and consolidation of applications. The burden of SOA implementation typically falls most heavily on the people and organizational side of the enterprise, where new skills and responsibilities have to be introduced along with attention to the business requirements, and to the much tighter relationship between IT and business.

Additional key highlights of this study include:

* So far, most of the CM growth has occurred among the large enterprises that have been much earlier adopters of SOA than medium-sized or small companies.

* The financial services, telecom, government, and to some extent utility (energy) sectors have represented the primary markets for SOA-related CM services -- again, because they have been the early SOA adopters to address their need to manage IT complexity and its escalating maintenance cost.

* The retail and travel and hospitality sectors will most likely represent the next wave of clients with a need for SOA-based CM.

This IDC study, SOA-Driven Organizational Change Management: A Market Trends and Vendor Landscape Analysis of Major Service Players to Address This Emerging Opportunity (IDC #204727) examines broad market trends and the vendor landscape, focusing on eight service providers with respect to service oriented architecture (SOA)-based organizational change management (CM). The eight major service providers that IDC interviewed were Accenture, BEA, Capgemini, CSC, Deloitte, Keane, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Wipro. This document focuses on four major areas pertinent to SOA-based CM including: market trends and dynamics; services vendor strategy, focus, and capabilities; competitive differentiators among the service vendors and; client examples.

About IDC

IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. Over 850 IDC analysts in 50 countries provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends. For more than 42 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.