According to U.S. analyst Evans Data, the number of companies planning or executing service-oriented architecture (SOA) deployments on a Java platform increased slightly during the last six months while those planning to build SOA implementations on .NET decreased by almost 20%.

California-based Evans Data has something of a reputation for its rather specialised insight into application development. It maintains an impartial panel of developers who act as its eyes and ears around the world, with a significant presence in EMEA. According to its latest survey of developers and IT managers actively working on web services. .NET deployments for SOA were still ahead with 31% but with 28% now expecting to target Java technologies the rival platforms are virtually tied. Indeed, almost one in five companies are expecting to support both.

"There's currently a lot of activity in the open source world, and particularly in the Eclipse communities, around SOA" says John Andrews, CEO of Evans Data Corp. "Most of the major players in that space are introducing new solutions aimed at SOA, and they are almost invariably Java-based. Open source SOA looks poised to become a real force in the industry and consequently a serious contender to .NET."

SOA is finally coming into its own, reckon the rune readers at Evans, with three-quarters of all companies that have built or are building web services now planning to implement SOA. More than one in five have already adopted a formal SOA for company-wide adoption.

The company surveyed nearly 400 developers working with web services and also found that over 70% of those writing web services have experienced a cost saving. Unsurprisingly, code re-use and automation of processes were the primary reasons.

Developers felt that testing and validating web services was the greatest challenge for developing an SOA, but that determining a return on investement was almost as great a challenge. The survey also found that business to business implementations were the most common uses for web services, followed by data integration.

Seamus Quinn