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Thursday, February 19, 2009
Making SOA ROI Real
Read the "Making SOA ROI Real" article published in the SOA World Magazine.
Do you think organizations are achieving positive SOA ROI? I just blogged that I think “Big SOA is Dead; Little SOA is Thriving” at: http://tinyurl.com/soa-today2 . Ok, maybe Big SOA isn’t “dead”, but certainly struggling to convince companies to invest in BPM, BAM, ESB (Big SOA) in today’s economic climate is a tough, academic sell when they can go Little SOA with positive ROI. Organizations want rapid results– they want SOA Today and not 6-9 months down the line!
SOA is a program and needs to be approached as such. It cannot be built over night. You need to take a number of small, incremental steps to get where you want to go (Small SOA). I don't think I have ever seen a Big SOA implementation. No business would want to wait 6-9 months (or even longer) to see results. If you read through my blog including this and other published articles, you will see a logical approach to making SOA work in a very short timeframe. To give you an example, we, at National City, saw positive ROI within the first year of the SOA program inception.
Additionally, a number of open source vendors have matured their products to the point that they can be adopted by large enterprises. This reduces the overall investment needed in SOA infrastructure, thus making SOA payback period so much shorter.
Even though many companies are not achieving positive ROI from their SOA investments, I can tell you -- it is easy and it is possible. All you need to do is organize the program in the right way. Also, as long as you recognize that SOA payback takes months, not days, you should be able to set the right expectations for the business.
2 comments:
Do you think organizations are achieving positive SOA ROI?
I just blogged that I think “Big SOA is Dead; Little SOA is Thriving” at: http://tinyurl.com/soa-today2 . Ok, maybe Big SOA isn’t “dead”, but certainly struggling to convince companies to invest in BPM, BAM, ESB (Big SOA) in today’s economic climate is a tough, academic sell when they can go Little SOA with positive ROI. Organizations want rapid results– they want SOA Today and not 6-9 months down the line!
Jordan,
SOA is a program and needs to be approached as such. It cannot be built over night. You need to take a number of small, incremental steps to get where you want to go (Small SOA). I don't think I have ever seen a Big SOA implementation. No business would want to wait 6-9 months (or even longer) to see results. If you read through my blog including this and other published articles, you will see a logical approach to making SOA work in a very short timeframe. To give you an example, we, at National City, saw positive ROI within the first year of the SOA program inception.
Additionally, a number of open source vendors have matured their products to the point that they can be adopted by large enterprises. This reduces the overall investment needed in SOA infrastructure, thus making SOA payback period so much shorter.
Even though many companies are not achieving positive ROI from their SOA investments, I can tell you -- it is easy and it is possible. All you need to do is organize the program in the right way. Also, as long as you recognize that SOA payback takes months, not days, you should be able to set the right expectations for the business.
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