A few weeks ago I wrote of being impressed by Oracle's efforts in SOA. I also declared that “an interesting thing about Oracle is that it claims (and I'm inclined to believe the PR on this) that it is recognized as a leading SOA vendor”.

Subsequently I was contacted by Dale Vile, of Freeform Dynamics, a company that does statistical research into the IT market. (I worked with Dale a while ago and he's a more-than competent technical analyst, but now spends his time designing surveys and manipulating spreadsheets.) He alerted me to a survey his company had carried out for IBM on SOA which indicated that, in terms of recognition, IBM had a substantial lead over everyone else. The survey has not been made generally available because it was IBM sponsored.

Dale comments: “Microsoft's ‘get the facts’ antics mean we all have to be very careful about how sponsored research is conducted and presented now, so we have not published this data—I just thought you would be interested. FYI, the main aim of the study was to look at drivers and practicalities independently of vendor specifics (safe from a sponsorship perspective)—we threw the supplier perception question in towards the end to provide IBM with a bit of intelligence on how well they were doing.”

The survey found that, in the area of recognition, “IBM was way out in front. Microsoft and BEA were an equal second, with about a third of the recognition of IBM, and Oracle was fourth with about a quarter.”

Dale would not have allowed me to publish this information were it not that another survey appeared recently of the Asian market from Springboard Research, which also confirmed IBM leadership.

Details of the full survey can be found in the article “Asia Suffering from an Acute Lack of Awareness of Service Oriented Architecture”. The article states that “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.”

All of which must be great news for the IBM marketing folk. Perception doesn't always translate into business, but lack of perception surely translates into lack of business. For that reason, I'm a little concerned that HP just doesn't figure in these recognition contests. When IT users ask me which are the major SOA vendors, I usually give a complicated answer. But if pressed to name the companies that I believe have technology leadership, I point the finger at HP and IBM.

Clearly, HP needs to get its SOA message across.