SOA Adoption in Western Europe: An End-User Perspective

This IDC study presents and analyzes the results of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) related topics from IDC's European Vertical Markets Survey 2007. More specifically the study examines respondents' familiarity with SOA, reasons for SOA adoption, and SOA adoption plans in the five countries surveyed: the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The study also considers some of the recommendations that IT vendors and IT buyers respectively should bear in mind to be successful when selling and implementing SOA.

The data and analysis presented in this study provide valuable input to vendors offering SOA solutions as well as to end-user organizations embarking on SOA projects. According to Christina Steensboe, program manager with IDC's European Software and Services Group, "The survey findings showed a lack of understanding of SOA with more than 40% of respondents indicating that they were not familiar with SOA. A significant opportunity thus exists to help educate and advise end users before and during their SOA projects."