Strong Growth in SOA and Web Services, Says Survey

This year the percentage of functioning Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) has almost doubled, according to Evans Data Corp's latest Web services development survey. Twenty-four percent of respondents are saying they currently implement SOA, an 85 percent increase from last year. Web Services are now also experiencing more comprehensive implementation, according to a release from the company. Thirty percent of respondents will be using more than 20 services in the next year, a 58 percent increase from current levels. Twenty-five percent of respondents are saying the leading problem in implementation of Web services are changing or lack of industry standards, a 67 percent increase from last year.

"While we are still at the beginning of this major software architecture shift, it is clear that the benefits of both SOA and Web Services are beginning to be realized," said John Andrews, president of Evans Data. "We envision that the SOA maturation cycle will take at least another five plus years."

Other findings from the Spring 2006 Survey of almost 400 managers and developers:

• Web services are often down anywhere from an hour to a day. Almost half of respondents are saying that when their most reliable Web services go down, they usually stay down for an hour or more. Of the worst performing Web services, 47 percent are down for over six hours.
• Authentication of online identities is the greatest security challenge to Web Services. One of four respondents is saying that inability to confirm the identities of online users is the biggest problem.