Interest in service oriented architecture (SOA) is ramping up with firms expected to significantly increase investments in the technology throughout the rest of 2006.

According to a recent IDC end-user survey of US-based companies, the majority of respondents rated SOA as 'important' to their overall IT and business strategy.

The companies further indicated that they are planning to purchase SOA-related services by the end of 2006.

IDC said that this provides a "significant opportunity" for service vendors to assist companies in implementing SOA, and that vendors must continue their education efforts, provide guidelines, and demonstrate the business benefits to reach the majority of potential SOA users.

"Companies trying to implement SOA without any outside help from a services vendor will soon discover that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to successfully roll out a large or corporate-wide SOA initiative without considering the impact on the organisation and its employees," said Marianne Hedin, programme manager for IDC Worldwide Services.

"To help them tackle the various issues involving organisational change they will need a service vendor."

When considering assistance from an external service provider, the study found that the firms planning to adopt SOA are most likely to turn to a large technology vendor, consulting firm or systems integrator.

The analyst firm believes that end users are more likely to turn to these large and established service vendors as they are unwilling to take a risk with a less-known services player when embarking on a new technology venture.

In terms of the types of services that both current and future SOA adopters are planning to acquire, the respondents indicated that their companies will procure a wide range of services including consulting, implementation, training/education, application development, application management/outsourcing and support services.
Although consulting services continue to be on top of the list, additional types of services are also expected to be in strong demand by SOA adopters.

In addition, the study revealed that the IT department is the primary decision maker for purchasing SOA-related services.