Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry, today released results from its research focused on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in Asia. A key finding from the research is that within the Asian region, there is an overall lack of awareness of SOA which is the key factor holding back wider adoption.

Springboard surveyed 2,615 CIOs and IT Decision Makers in Australia, China, India, and Singapore and found that only 21% were aware of the concept of SOA. From the survey results, IBM had a massive lead over other IT vendors with 50% of organizations planning to implement SOA saying that IBM was the best suited to help them migrate to a service oriented architecture.

“While many major IT Vendors are banking on SOA as part of their growth strategy, it is clear that more needs to be done in educating the market on SOA and the benefits that it can provide” said Dane Anderson, Vice President of Research at Springboard Research. “While there has been considerable hype about SOA in the market, adequate awareness is not filtering down to the enterprise level which will be an adoption roadblock unless more education and market awareness takes place.”

Springboard found that of organizations that have deployed SOA, the majority (54%) were using it to achieve application integration. The second highest category at 27% was utilizing SOA to deliver Web Services and Web Applications, followed by organizations using SOA to achieve data integration across the enterprise (9%) and making services shareable across the enterprise (9%).

This survey also provided details regarding the factors prohibiting organizations from deploying SOA. The most common factor cited by organizations was that they were not sure of the benefits SOA would deliver (30% of organizations). Following this, several factors arose including other priorities (24%), legacy applications (17%), organizational issues (14%), funding limitations (10%), and a lack of IT skills (5%).

Looking more specifically at vendor perceptions, IBM had a massive lead over other IT vendors with 50% of organizations planning to implement SOA saying that IBM was the best suited to help them migrate to a service oriented architecture. After IBM, the next closest vendor had half the level of recognition.

“It is obvious that there is still a long way to go in Asia regarding SOA awareness and vendors’ efforts to break through to end-users” added Ravi Shekhar Pandey, Senior Market Analyst for Springboard Research. “SOA is not only an IT solution, it is a business solution and it is key that IT vendors also educate the market on the business benefits that SOA can provide.”