Recently, the homepage for the Nationwide Building Society crashed, a result of server failure from increased user volume. 

Those who tried to access the page were greeted with a "Server is too busy" prompt. After the failure was attended to, Nationwide' site was back up roughly two hours later.

"We take any customer experience that falls below our acceptable standards very seriously and have undertaken a full investigation," said a Nationwide spokesperson.

In 2009, the company experienced a similar malfunction, which prompted it to seek changes. As a result, it is currently undergoing a business transformation program to incorporate service-oriented architecture to improve their business processes. The switch will cost the company roughly $484 million.

Last year, Nationwide announced it was also virtualizing the 500 servers in its data center, which would ultimately cut nearly $13 million in costs resulting from operations and energy. There has not been confirmation whether this switch played any part in the website's recent failure.

Struggles aside, Nationwide's switch to SOA is following a recent trend. Many other companies and organizations, including the U.S. military, have begun adoption SOA to increase efficiency and cut down on work expenditures.