Java Is Catching Up to .NET for SOA Deployments

Published: August 29, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Evans Data is one of the market research companies that focuses on what tools developers are using to produce applications. According to a recent survey of application developers, the use of Java in development projects using a services oriented architecture (SOA) approach is on the rise, but those using .NET is slumping.

Specifically, the Evans Data survey, which compares results with the recent poll to a similar poll of developers from six months ago, shows that those companies deploying SOA-style applications were choosing .NET 28 percent less frequently. In the current poll, 28 percent of developers said their SOA projects would be based on Java, while 31 percent were going to use .NET. Just under 20 percent said that they would support both, and the remainder said that they are using a mix of technologies, including but not limited to Java and .NET.

"There's currently a lot of activity in the open source world, and particularly in the Eclipse communities, around SOA" says John Andrews, chief executive officer at Evans Data. "Most of the major players in that space are introducing new solutions aimed at SOA, and they are almost invariably Java-based. Open source SOA looks poised to become a real force in the industry and consequently a serious contender to .NET."

The latest Evans Data poll suggests that three-quarters of companies that have deployed Web services are now planning to move to the more sophisticated extension of Web services, which is what SOA really is. A little more than a fifth of those companies polled have adopted a company-wide plan for the adoption of SOA technologies in their applications.

Of the 400 developers who said that they have deployed Web services, 70 percent say that their companies have saved money doing so, with code reuse and automation of processes being the most frequently cited causes for the cost savings. Testing and validating Web services is the most difficult challenge that developers say they face as they move to SOA-style applications, and they say determining the return on investment from such efforts is even more difficult.

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