Top 10 SOA posts for 2007 -- part 1
SOA efforts became a part of the IT activities of many organizations this year. However, as many are learning, SOA is more than another project to be developed and rolled out. Rather, it can be a huge game-changer -- both in terms of the way the organization looks at information technology, as well as in relationships with vendors.
Many of the posts here at this blogsite that generated the most interest and traffic in 2007 were those that examined the potential ROI, or lack of it, from SOA, along with the burdens we're placing on IT departments to deliver.
This month, I will be looking back at the top posts for the year, starting with number 10 and working up to number 1 over the next several days:
#10: 'How to ruin an SOA program and bankrupt IT.' Mark Rix explains how the economies of scale generated through SOA -- better ROI over the long haul -- contrast with the cheaper up-front implementation of point-to-point applications. However, the risk occurs when organizations think they're putting SOA in place, but end up with little or no ROI because it wasn't true SOA -- still point-to-point interfaces.
#9 Is SOA too much for the IT department? We hear endlessly about IT taking the reigns and transforming their entire businesses. But C-level and line-of-business executives, most of whom are clueless about SOA, hold most of that power. Then we scratch our heads when we see studies that show no appreciable business payback for ROI efforts in SOA. IT has plenty on its plate in terms of integration, development, and maintenance -- are we asking too much of IT to get involved in overthrowing the established business order as well?
#8 AMR: SOA will kill ERP: This piece was originally posted in August 2006, but had many readers into this year as well. AMR's Bruce Richardson sees trouble on the horizon for ERP vendors, and said it could fall out like this: SAP and Oracle customers will stop buying applications from their ERP vendors, opting instead to contract with low-cost Indian or Eastern European integrators to build custom composite apps that sit on top of their ERP backbones. Bruce said this may be the case in 2010, but this may be starting to happen already.