The potential of service-oriented architectures

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a relatively new form of information systems architecture and a real buzzword in the last few years in the domain of information system development. There are lots of different initiative, origin either from ICT industry sector and government (EU, USA) that are focused on popularization and further development of SOA. Different international, both institutional and technical, standards were developed, the majority of problems of technical nature regarding SOA realization and use have been successfully solved, and despite all that the number of successful SOA implementation is still relatively low. To identify the potential of service-oriented architectures development and implementation in Croatia a survey was conducted on Croatian ICT companies that have potential to successfully develop and implement SOA in their business environment. The survey was focused on companies´ mid- and long-term plans and initiatives to develop and implement service-oriented architectures and on positive (advantages) and negative (disadvantages) aspects of SOA development and use in their environment. In this article we give an overview of preliminary results of this survey and comparison to similar surveys conducted abroad.