The pressure seemed to have come from customers of consultant who read my post, and past it along to their contractors with the comments “Then, why are you charging me to program my integration?” Then, the consultant, instead of answering the question, would fire off an e-mail to me disagreeing with my take on this, and that it was causing them problems, in some cases ccing their client. Nice.

Here’s a summary, but not the exact words, of the e-mail chains:

Mr. Anonymous: Your take on programming as [being] bad for integration was not based on reality. Indeed, we feel that you should program all of your integration so you have complete control over the integration component, thus why we advise our clients to hire us to create their connections specifically for their requirements.

Me: Great. No real issue with doing that, clearly with enough money and time you can solve their initial integration problem. However, my point was about the time and money it will take to continue that approach through changes in interfaces, rules and routing logic, application and database semantics, changes in services, movement to standards, etc., how are you going to handle that?

Mr. Anonymous: We have to re-development the integration component for all that; we do it all the time.

Me: I bet you do. How long does that take?

Mr. Anonymous: Typically one man month for most major changes, including testing and deployment.

Me: So, what are the costs over a 2 year period, typically?

Mr. Anonymous: It varies, but typically it’s $50K for programming services for each connected system, thus $150 K for 3 systems, and an average of $10K a month for maintenance and support, additional connections are extra. Well under what you would need to pay for a SOA or general integration technology product, and it’s custom to the client.

Me: So, that’s:

$150K + (10K*24) = $390,000 over two year, with no changes?

Mr. Anonymous: Yes.

Me: Does that see like a good investment to you considering that most SOA integration products are less than $50K and provide you with the ability to place volatility into a central domain, where you can better manage changes to all point systems, as well as the addition or deletion of systems. Moreover, do so much faster then development or redevelopment, thus providing a more agile solution that will provide more of a business advantage?

Mr. Anonymous: [No response]

Me: You there?

Mr. Anonymous: [No response]

Sometimes all you have to do is hold up a mirror.