Nine of every 10 companies are adopting or have adopted service-oriented architectures and will exit 2006 with SOA planning, design and programming experience, according to a new AberdeenGroup benchmark report, "Enterprise Service Bus and SOA Middleware."

The report, based on an Aberdeen benchmark survey of more than 120 IT and business professionals, indicates a growing and widespread acceptance of SOA technology, especially among large enterprises (at least $1 billion in annual revenue).

But migrating to an SOA doesn't come without a price, the survey also found.

"Redesigning business processes, high IT integration costs, and customization challenges are eating up 40 percent of the IT budget in integration expenditures," said Peter S. Kastner, vice president and research director for enterprise integration at Aberdeen and author of the report. "SOA is broadly seen as a real technology step forward, with the largest companies, who have the biggest integration problems, leading the way."

Enterprises are taking three distinct approaches to SOA adoption:

• SOA "Lite": This approach is based on open-source programs and industry standards and is best suited for small companies, lightweight integration, and simple Web services such as employee self-service.

• Enterprise SOA: This is a suite of SOA middleware for mission-critical and complex installations, best suited for mid-to-large companies.

• SOA ERP. This approach offers mid-size and some large companies an entry to SOA via extensions to enterprise resource planning (ERP) application software.

The report examines the state of SOA middleware adoption in mid-2006 with an emphasis on enterprise services buses (ESBs), middleware software that connects, orchestrates and manages business processes across an SOA. Enterprise SOA practitioners prefer full-function suites that include ESBs.