Overview:

The shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA)—loosely coupled constellations of collaborating software components—is under way, with most enterprises in Nemertes’ Service Oriented Architectures and Applications benchmark already deploying at least a pilot SOA, and a few running full-blown SOA implementations.

As discussed in this issue paper, SOA poses unique challenges to the establishment of a business case. While SMB organizations rate their SOA as successful or extremely successful, most have yet to quantify a benefit for SOA. A lack of quantified benefits for SOA is not terribly surprising given that many organizations are early in their deployment. Most organizations have not implemented metrics to track a SOA ROI and, without metrics, they will never quantify the benefits of SOA. When times are good this may not be a big issue, but when times are hard, particularly in light of SOA’s long development cycle, without quantifiable benefit, SOA could be a prime target for budget cutbacks.

Author(s): Ted Ritter, Research Analyst

Keywords: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), developer efficiency, operational expense, professional services, and training.

Vendors mentioned: Accenture, BEA, Capgemini, IBM.

Clients: read this Issue Paper - SOA Business Case for SMBs

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