About 40 percent of Canadian companies are currently developing a SOA project, according to remarked made by IDC Analyst David Senf at a recent event in Toronto. This lags SOA adoption in the U.S., and smaller organizations tend to adopt SOA at lower levels than larger ones. Senf attributed the lag to Canada's status as "a mid-market country," with a lot of manufacturing and other heavy industry, companies which tend not to be early adopters of new technological approaches to business problems.

"When we look at companies who have automated more tasks, who have virtualized across these different layers, we do see them achieving various cost benefits, being able to be more flexible in their business processes," Senf said during his presentation.

However, Canadian companies in other sectors, such as financial services, are finding some success with SOA. The 40 percent figure can be viewed as a glass two-fifths full rather than three-fifths empty. Farm Credit Canada, for example, was presented as a company that "needed to redesign its customer enterprise value chain on SOA," and has been pleased with its SOA effort.