Solace commissioned independent research firm Coleman Parkes to lead a global survey on event-driven architecture (EDA) and help shed light on how organizations are striving to incorporate real-time data and EDA into their enterprise landscape.

Conducted in August 2021, the survey harvested 840 respondents in 9 countries across EMEA, North America, Australia and Asia-Pacific, in roles ranging from C-Suite to IT architecture.

Search

Although respondent backgrounds were varied, a few notable trends emerged:

1

Businesses understand the benefits of EDA

Organizations recognize the value of event-driven architecture and they know what they want to achieve with it. With EDA as the foundation, respondents cited the ability to tackle disruptions thrown in their path, while also keeping up with innovation to cope with newly rising demands of their business.

How can EDA help business?

  • 0%
  • 10%
  • 20%
  • 30%
  • 40%
  • 50%
  • 47% COVID-19 related issues, e.g. travel regulations, airport handling
  • 42% Data governance and regulation
  • 38% Supply chain issues
  • 36% Regulatory changes
  • 31% Burst handling, e.g. unexpected sales spikes
  • 26% Trade disputes, e.g. customs declarations
  • 26% Product recalls
  • 24% Natural disasters

2

EDA Maturity Curve: Early days to adoption, but progress undeniable

While the vast majority of organizations surveyed, 85%, claim they are on their journey towards implementation, just 13% of businesses across North America, EMEA, Australia and Asia-Pac have made it to the ‘promised land’ of EDA maturity.

The EDA Maturity Curve

  • 0%
  • 5%
  • 10%
  • 15%
  • 20%
  • 25%
  • 7% Plans, but no progress yet
  • 13% Some EDA progress/projects, but no broad strategy
  • 18% Several instances of EDA across multiple use cases
  • 19% A central team promotes EDA, and supports a limited number of event distribution tools and use cases
  • 23% A central team promotes EDA, supports a robust centralized event store/ecosystem, and is often integrated with our API initiatives
  • 13% EDA design skills are prevalent and we incorporate EDA into most use cases

3

A Key Challenge: Business Executive Buy-in

For those still on the journey, a number of obstacles lie in their way. One critical hurdle is the buy-in disconnect from IT (61%) to Senior Management/Line of Business executives (35%). Clearly, the business value of EDA is getting lost in translation between IT and business. It’s now more crucial than ever to articulate how the business bottom line can benefit from EDA.

IT onboard with EDA, Business still in process

  • 0%
  • 20%
  • 40%
  • 60%
  • 80%
  • 62%IT operations
  • 60%IT leadership
  • 38%Senior/executive management
  • 33%Line of Business Executives

Find Out More

To learn more about these and other key findings, download the EDA Survey eBook.