Most IT directors dismiss Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) as " meaningless marketing puff", according to research by Diagonal Consulting. 

The results of a poll released by the analyst firm today suggest that two-thirds of IT directors do not believe that the term 'SOA' actually refers to a real technology.

"Acronyms have become a fact of life in the IT industry and get hyped so much that people start to see them as marketing terms," said Mark Williamson, managing director at Diagonal Consulting.

The research comes just a day after analyst firm IDC claimed that SOAs will have a "profound impact" on the overall services market. 

IDC forecast that worldwide spending on SOA-based external services will reach $8.6bn in 2006, a 138 per cent increase from $3.6bn in 2005, and that global spending on SOA-based services will reach $33.8bn by 2010.

However, Diagonal Consulting's research also highlighted a clear need for SOAs. Some 55 per cent of respondents stated that they have not been able to improve their businesses because IT systems are too rigid and complex.

"The danger, however, is that people miss what's actually behind the acronym, " said Williamson.

"If you delve into SOA, you realise that it's much more than marketing hype; it's actually an approach to organising and managing the IT function to ensure it is aligned to and supporting business processes and objectives."

Diagonal Consulting's research was carried out by Vanson Bourne, which interviewed 100 UK IT directors in large enterprises with over 1,000 employees.