More than 40 percent of developers working on SOA compete a typical development within three months, according to an Evans Data study to be released on Friday.This figure is more than twice the number of developers that accomplished this a year ago, Evans said. The Evans Data 2006 Web Services Development Survey also said more than 60 percent of SOA projects are completed within six months. The survey results were cited as evidence of dramatic productivity increases by Evans, which noted the improvements are concurrent with developers’ embrace of .Net and Java for SOA in almost equal numbers. Additionally, the number of companies with more than 40 Web services in production has doubled in two years, Evans said. The figure is expected to double again in the next year. “We are now moving from the SOA pilot stage into full live deployments taking advantage of the reuse of frameworks and services thus driving the much-improved productivity curve,” said John Andrews, Evans Data’s president, in a statement released by the company. “This adoption highlights the proven benefits that both the IT and line of business organizations achieve through their SOA efforts.”The survey gauged the perspectives of more than 400 Web services developers. In other findings in the survey:* Evans found that half of developers working on Web services use AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) or plan to do so in the next 12 months, an increase of 45 percent from six months ago.* Determining return on investment in SOA is considered the top challenge to SOA deployments, followed by achieving organizational buy-in. * In three years, two of three SOA developers will be running most of their applications in managed code. Technology Industry