A recent study by Share, a group for mainframe and other large system users, has found that the larger the company, the more popular service-oriented architecture (SOA) becomes.

The survey of 431 Share members indicated that for companies with 1,000 employees or fewer, less than 25% have adopted SOA or plan to. But for companies with 10,000 employees or more, that number jumped to nearly half.

Indeed, widespread SOA adoption has been a long time coming. At a Share conference in August 2006, interviews with several attendees revealed an interest in SOA but also that users were unsure about SOA and the technology's impact on their data centers. Share Treasurer Jim Michael said users still struggle to truly grasp SOA. but, said Michael, if users better understood the concept, they might discover that they already use these technologies.