"IT vendors should focus on elevating the level of understanding of SOA as, once SOA familiarity becomes widespread across an organization, it rapidly becomes an essential part of its IT strategies," said Giacomo Laurini, senior research analyst, IDC's European Vertical Markets group.

The familiarity level of SOA varies notably among industries. On average, 60% of the interviewed companies have a sufficient knowledge of this technology. However, except for in the banking and insurance/other finance sectors, the percentage of organizations with a detailed level of SOA understanding is lower than 20%.

Verticals do show a much higher homogeneity in the rank of SOA importance than for SOA familiarity. SOA has a strong importance for the IT departments of organizations that are familiar with it and around 30% of them rank SOA as being extremely important. This percentage is higher for insurance/other finance, government, and transport/communications/utilities.

On average, Western European organizations want to increase their SOA spending, with 11% of organizations planning to invest in SOA in the next 24 months. This percentage is more than double that of organizations planning to invest in SOA in the next 12 months (5%), which illustrates the growing interest in SOA. This is especially evident in the insurance/other finance and retail/wholesale sectors, where investments become more relevant in the 24-month timeframe.

SOA is important for IT departments because it can be an enabler for the improvement of IT systems quality. All organizations (besides business service) indicated that the main reasons to adopt SOA are the improvement in the quality of IT systems, the lower IT operating costs, and the need to allow greater integration of processes and information with customers and suppliers.

This IDC study, 2006 Western European Vertical Markets and SOA: An IDC Survey, by Giacomo Laurini and Angela Vacca (Doc #M05N, December 2006), offers survey-based results for SOA adoption and future plans in the Western European vertical markets and provides indications on the drivers spurring corporations towards a more intensive use of the SOA approach and details of the key projects launched in this area.