More than 60 per cent of European software developers believe that using open source software can have significant benefits, newly published research has shown.

However, the survey of more than 1,000 European developers by BEA Systems also found that software engineers see significant barriers to widespread implementation.

These fears were found to include a lack of support and maintenance services, lack of regular updates, unpredictable total cost of ownership and intellectual property concerns.

Reliable support services were found to be the most compelling reason for developers to choose commercial vendors, with 68 per cent of those surveyed citing regular updates, maintenance and better support as their reasons for not deploying open source software.

This reluctance can also be attributed to the lack of accountability provided by open source licences, cited by 42 per cent of developers as the primary reason. Interestingly, developers in Madrid felt that open source was most appropriate for applications that never leave development.

Jim Rivera, director of technology at BEA Systems, said: "The survey shows that developers remain concerned about the level of support and accountability associated with open source software.

"As a result, we are seeing customers continue to turn to commercial vendors for more advanced, complex technologies used for production deployments."

The results show that almost three quarters of developers surveyed are either developing, or expect to be developing, service-oriented architectures (SOAs) this year.

According to the poll, London and Madrid appear to be further ahead in developing SOA applications, with more than 30 per cent in London and nearly 25 per cent in Madrid currently developing such applications.

Developers in Paris, however, are more likely to think they will not develop SOA applications for more than a year, with only 10 per cent currently developing SOA applications.

When questioned about the most useful technologies in SOA, respondents cited web services (28 per cent), followed by service orchestration with languages such as BPEL and BPELJ that facilitate the automation of business processes (18 per cent).

"We believe that 2005 can be the year of the business project, not the IT project. We see a shift to SOA as being driven by the demand for IT to better align with the business and facilitate changing business processes," said Rivera.