The next wave of SOA opportunities may elude professional services providers, unless they make significant investments in their service oriented architecture (SOA) capabilities, according to IDC. The industry analysts say enterprises are moving from primarily initiating SOA pilot projects to implementing and rolling out their first departmental or even company-wide projects. Within this context, IDC evaluates and compares 17 SOA professional services vendors.

According to IDC, SOA is being heralded as the most effective way to overcome the complexities involved in creating businesses that are agile and adaptive enough to address the ever-changing market dynamics. The majority of services vendors surveyed noted that SOA is now a core element of their service portfolio, and indicated that they currently provide an array of SOA-related services.

"There is no question that SOA offers a major growth opportunity for service vendors in all of their major service offerings, be it business or IT consulting, systems integration, custom application development, outsourcing, or support and training," said Marianne Hedin, research manager for IDC's Worldwide Services Research Program. "As a result, service firms must make significant investments in building their capabilities in this emerging area."

Key trends observed in this study include:

* SOA will need to be leveraged in every service offering that is part of a vendor's portfolio in order to best capitalize on this opportunity

* Partnering and partnerships are essential in order to deploy SOA, particularly as engagements become increasingly complex and large in scope

* The SMB market opportunity will become increasingly promising as smaller and mid-sized firms begin to understand the benefits from SOA implementation.

In order of importance, the top four SOA clients by verticals are: financial services, government, healthcare, and retail.

The IDC study, Worldwide SOA Professional Services Vendor Analysis: 17 Service Firms Are Getting Ready to Address a Fast-Growing and Expanding Market Opportunity (IDC #33694), examines the evolution of the Services Oriented Architecture or SOA-based professional competitive market by profiling and comparing major service providers (mainly large, global service firms) with service offerings and capabilities within this arena. Companies covered include: IBM Global Services, Accenture, Keane, BEA Systems, Wipro, and Infosys.