Most firms deploying SOA are focused either on early-stage planning, and/or trial deployment around legacy application integration.

Of the thirty-seven percent of executives interviewed who indicated they are currently in a limited or full production stage of SOA deployment, many are merely managing a collection of web services, and have yet to make a strong commitment to SOA as a management discipline (as opposed to an integration technology).

Implementers are taking a technology-led approach to SOA deployment, even though earlier research showed almost universal agreement that business needs to be in the lead

The key long-term driver of SOA adoption – cost reduction – outdistances all others by a two-to-one margin. Unlike such technology revolutions of the past as client/server and minicomputers, users are also citing “code reusability” and “business agility” as strong secondary drivers of SOA.