Companies that have invested time and money in service oriented architecture (SOA) are at an advantage over their non-SOA-embracing peers, according to new research from Aberdeen Group.

Full SOA devotees boast a 90 per cent improvement in end-user satisfaction compared with the 15 per cent gain enjoyed by those using a mix of SOA and web services, according a study by the analyst, which showed that the organisations that ranked best in their class were twice as likely to have deployed SOA middleware compared to those who've only gone as far as making use of web services.