Untitled Document
The SOA ROI is difficult, if not impossible, to define and measure. Have you
noticed that the press and the blogosphere are filled with SOA implementers
and analysts discussing the ROI of SOA and the idea that stand-alone SOA efforts
are dead? Why? Because SOA is a middleware technology and ROI is measured based
on usage. Ultimately, these ROI discussions all seem to reach the same conclusion:
'Enterprise SOA ROI hinges on the ability to demonstrate value to the business
at large — more growth, revenue opportunities, and all that good stuff.'
said ebizQ's Joe McKendrick. And that’s the problem.
Let's face it, SOA is plumbing; buzz-worthy plumbing, but still plumbing. Your
average business executive (think sales manager, marketing director, finance
officer, or customer support rep) doesn’t understand SOA or, more importantly,
grasp how it can help them with their day-to-day issues. In fact, if business
folk think about it all, they probably just hope it stays out of sight and doesn’t
get in the way of the IT projects that do address their needs.
SOA needs to shift from an IT-centric technology to a business accelerator
solution. To paraphrase Macehiter/Ward-Dutton in their recent note, 'More big
vs small thinking: SOA vs BPM', IT must focus on where the real business value
of SOA lies. That means it needs help. Macehiter/Ward-Dutton point out that
BPM can help distill some SOA value up to the business level. And as some of
the Enterprise Ajax companies can attest, Rich Internet Application (RIA) tools
like Silverlight, Flash/Flex, and Ajax also make good SOA service consumers.
But a few RIA applications do not justify an enterprise-wide multi-year SOA
effort. We need the business folks to talk about SOA like they do their CRM
and ERP: as critical to their work.
Customer leads, purchase orders, inventory. These are the things business users
understand. If SOA gets helps get this kind of data and functionality to them,
faster and cheaper than they get it today, then you’ve got a winner. And
this is where enterprise mashups enter the conversation: a middleware technology
that actually involves the user. A mashup is a micro-integration of multiple
Web-enabled sources. ‘Web-enabled sources’ is a fancy way of saying
SOA and any service that adheres to standards and runs on the ubiquitous Web
protocol: HTTP.
1
Print this article
Email this article
Talk Back!
Write to Editor
