Nearly half of UK businesses are pursuing service-oriented architecture (SOA) in their IT infrastructures, according to research from systems integrator Griffiths Waite.

Of the 180 organisations polled in the survey, 47% said they were pursuing SOA. Among those, the most common reason for doing so was improving the flexibility of IT.

Another study into SOA adoption was published by IT services company AppLabs. The survey polled IT professionals from Fortune 500 companies around the world and identified improved internal IT integration as the key driver for SOA.

When asked whether the rewards of SOA outweigh the risks, 27% of the respondents said that they were not aware that there were any risks. However, 35% were not so naive and indicated that they were concerned about the risks.

According to Graham Smith, head of client engagement for AppLabs Europe, the nature of SOA implementation is “extremely complex, and traditional approaches to testing are insufficient. Risk increases exponentially in an SOA environment, and organisations need to implement the right quality assurance and testing strategies from the outset to ensure that their SOA system meets all business objectives and goes live problem free.”

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