"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.