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Gartner: SOA 'Nearly Universal' in Europe, 'Lagging' in Asia

According to Gartner Research's 2008 SOA User Survey, the adoption of service-oriented architecture among larger European companies is 'nearly universal.'

Gartner's 's annual survey of enterprises worldwide found that while SOA has boomed in Europe -- more than 70 percent of companies have deployed it, and about 25 percent plan to in the next year -- its 'lagging' in Asia (only apx. 30 percent deployed, with slightly more than 20 percent planning) and 'moderate' in North America (almost 60 percent already using, and another apx. 25 percent plan to deploy).

Overall worldwide, this gives SOA a 53 percent adoption among companies, with an additional 25 percent planning to deploy it in the next 12 months.

While it looks like SOA is booming, at least in most places, Gartner also found that 16 percent of companies said they had no plans to use SOA -- up from 6 percent last year.

According to Gartner, this increase in those saying they have no SOA-related plans is due to a wide variety of reasons -- everything from companies not wanting to invest right now due to the current economic condition to companies finding out more about SOA and realizing it's either not for them or, even if it is, they don't have the required skill-set to implement it. In fact, 60 percent of companies cited "lack of internal SOA expertise" as a main reason they don't plan to adopt SOA; other top reasons picked were the cost/resources needed to implement SOA (44 percent), lack of organizational buy-in (40 percent) and that they saw SOA as "too new" (40 percent).

The survey also looked at the use of mash-up technology within these companies. According to Gartner, only apx. 12 percent of the companies surveyed are currently using mash-ups, with apx. 15 percent planning to implement within the next 12 months. 30 percent weren't sure of their plans, which Gartner states is not atypical for a newer technologies like mash-ups.

The full survey goes into more detail about all of these statistics, and also looks at adoption of event-driven architectures (EDA), REST/POX service models, Web-oriented architecture (WOA) and much more. Its available for purchase from Gartner here.

About the Author

Becky Nagel is a contributor to Application Development Trends. She is the editor of ADT's sister sites CertCities.com, TCPmag.com and Redmondmag.com, and is co-editor of RCPmag.com. You can contact her at [email protected].