The number of businesses planning to implement service-oriented architecture SOA projects has halved in the past 12 months, according to the latest research from analyst company Gartner.

Although just over half of the organisations Gartner quizzed in its fifth annual SOA survey are continuing to deploy SOA (53%), the number that were planning to deploy SOA for the first time dropped from 54% in 2007 to 24% in 2008.The number of organisations with no plans to deploy SOA grew from 6% in 2007 to 16% in 2008.

The most common reasons given for not pursuing SOA were the poor availability of staff with the required technical skills and the difficulty of building a viable business case for SOA.

“Organisations without a clear business case for SOA and without a plan to develop or acquire the necessary skills are justified in taking a cautious approach, and delaying SOA adoption plans for the coming year,” said Daniel Sholler, research vice president at Gartner.

Meanwhile, 20% of organisations surveyed were pursuing an event-driven architecture, seen by some as the next significant design pattern in enterprise IT, with a futher 20% planning to do so.

Further reading:

Structural hazard – SOA has won many converts, but its popularity should not mask the challenges of delivery