Forrester SOA survey: seven out of very happy, plan expansions

When the economy began to bite in 2008, many predicted that many service-oriented initiatives would be benched or cut as companies tightened up on IT spending. However, a new survey of more than 2,100 companies from Forrester finds the opposite seems to have happened -- SOA continued to grow in spite of tough times, or even because of tough times.

Only one to three percent have cut back on SOA.

"Service-oriented architecture continues to find a welcome home in both enterprises and SMBs," says a team of Forrester analysts, led by Randy Heffner. "Even during the Great Recession, all sizes of organizations moved ahead in their adoption of SOA."

Forrester found that 84 percent of Global 2000 enterprises report they are using SOA now or will be by the end of this year. And satisfaction runs high among this group — "more than 70 percent of SOA users say it has delivered enough benefit to expand its use."

In addition, as found in previous Forrester studies, only about one to three percent report of the 900 companies with SOA efforts say they actually cut back or abandoned SOA

Comparing survey results from Q4 2008 and Q4 2009, Forrester says that those currently using SOA plus those planning to use SOA within 12 months advanced from 62 percent to 68 percent — an increase of 10 percent.

Even small to medium-size businesses are getting in the act -- their adoption grew by 29 percent, growing from 34 percent to 44 percent.