Client

Merlin Federal SOA Coalition

Situation

While the government Information Technology (IT) market was awash with vendor marketing hype about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) two years ago, government IT decision makers viewed this infrastructure as a "nice-to-have" versus "have-to-have" investment. Myriad media articles attempted to connect SOA to a number of government IT and performance imperatives – from Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) to security to service/products-solution-ratio streamlining. Despite these efforts, SOA remains a technology approach in search of a killer application.

Challenges

The Merlin Federal SOA Coalition – Active Endpoints, AmberPoint, BEA Systems (now part of Oracle), Merlin International, Reactivity, and Systinet – wanted to position itself as a thought leader on the topic of SOA in government. Further, the coalition set out to raise its profile in the public sector space, increase stakeholder intimacy, and drive qualified leads.

Solution

Merlin Federal SOA Coalition worked with O'Keeffe & Company to launch the "SOA What? – Who and What is Driving SOA Adoption in the Federal Government?" study which quizzed Federal IT decision makers on their definition and perceptions of SOA. The study asked these executives if they have/intend to implement SOA, and specifically why they felt/feel compelled to do so. The study also provided insight on how Federal agencies are making the business case for SOA.

Highlights of the study include:

• SOA Goes Mainstream: Ability to address intra- and inter-agency integration driving move to the mainstream – 52 percent of respondents recognize the ability to integrate disparate systems as driving SOA adoption government-wide
• Management and Best Practice Imperative: Agencies need a management framework to ensure implementations deliver against objectives. Only 22 percent of respondents with SOA implementation experience describe their implementation as an unequivocal success, but 73 percent would recommend that other agencies adopt a SOA approach
• Technology and Beyond: Agencies need to invest in deeper training – beyond awareness. Executive understanding and sponsorship is key to achieving mission success – 50 percent of respondents who have completed a SOA implementation cite lack of SOA knowledge within the agency as the most significant challenge

Results

• Secured 21 articles – including feature articles and thought leadership stories
• Secured 350 study downloads/sales leads
• Secured approximately 4.7 million impressions