UK businesses testing the water with SOA

Almost half of UK businesses are looking at implementing service oriented architecture (SOA) technology as they develop their IT infrastructure.

Nearly half (47 per cent) of the 180 organisations questioned are actively focused on creating SOA capability, according to a survey conducted by IT services company Griffiths Waite.

Check out silicon.com's latest Cheat Sheets…

♦ BBC iPlayer
♦ Galileo
♦ CRM
♦ Biometrics
♦ Encryption

Speaking to silicon.com Hugh Griffiths, director of Griffiths Waite, said only 20 per cent of the companies considering SOA are actually engaged in projects to implement the tech. The remainder are either at a proof of concept stage or are merely planning projects.

He said: "I think there's definitely a strong movement towards [SOA] but I think it's going to be a gradual thing. SOA is just going to be the foundation piece in IT strategy."

Slightly less than half of organisations (49 per cent) looking at SOA said they're doing so to have a more adaptable architecture to support business change.

Another 14 per cent said SOA would allow them to maximise long-term IT investment by moving onto industry standards.

Griffiths added SOA is likely to really take off once the big software vendors have re-architected applications to make them more interoperable, making SOA environments easier to achieve.