On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 7:47 AM, Anne Thomas Manes <[email protected]> wrote: > WOA/REST have the same problem that SOA has. In order to sell an > architectural concept to a business person, you have to associate it > with a value proposition. For SOA, the value proposition was "reduced > cost and increased agility". The problem, though, was providing > evidence of success. I met a handful of companies that experienced > phenomenal success with SOA (when it was part of a larger IT > transformation effort), but most companies did not achieve lower costs > and increased agility. Individual integration projects were > successful, but as a whole, the SOA initiative failed. > > So tell me what the WOA/REST meme means in terms of business value? > (Hint: "simpler than SOA" is not a value proposition that will > resonate with a business guy). "Doing business like Amazon" won't > resonate with a manufacturing company. "Building Web sites that give > us better contact with our customers" is too low-level.
The Web can have the same value proposition as SOA, "reduced cost and increased agility". And for evidence of success, you point to all the ways the Web has delivered reduced cost and increased agility across various industries. To make it directly relevant to Manufacturing, I might tell the CEO about concepts like Manufacturing 2.0 and how the Web enables it. -- Nick
