True Todd! Very few companies quantify the value of their IT systems, SOA or not:
http://www.microfocus.com/AboutMicroFocus/pressroom/releases/pr20071001000000.asp /Herbjörn 2009/5/21 Todd Biske <[email protected]> > > > Reading this makes me wonder how many other efforts fall into the same > category? Lack of a business case or clear ROI is not a problem specific to > SOA. It is a problem for everything IT does. This is why it is no surprise > to me that Anne found a positive correlation between solid application > rationalization/portfolio management efforts with SOA success. I suspect the > same thing will be true with cloud computing, at least for companies with > existing infrastructure. For startups, it is a different story since they > don't have to answer the "what are my current costs" question. > > -tb > Todd Biske > http://www.biske.com/blog/ > Sent from my iPhone > > On May 21, 2009, at 7:24 AM, Gervas Douglas <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Thanks to Anne for pointing out this article: > > "A new Gartner > survey<http://www.itpro.co.uk/610889/soa-roi-proving-elusive-claims-gartner>of > SOA architects finds 40 percent do not measure how long it takes to > achieve a ROI for their SOA -- or if the darn thing had any business > benefit, for that matter. Shame on you guys! According to the survey: > > Gartner, which carried out the survey among enterprises from around the > world, also highlighted the fact that 50 per cent of those who had not yet > adopted SOA technologies did so because they could not articulate and > demonstrate the business value of it. > > *[ Keep up on developments in SOA with InfoWorld's Technology: > Architecture > newsletter<http://www.infoworld.com/newsletters/subscribe?showlist=infoworld_soa_rpt&source=fssr>. > ]* > > The fact is that people love doing SOA, or SOA-like things, but hate doing > the business cases or, more importantly, the analysis that needs to be done > on the back end. There are no reasonable expectations set going into the > project, nor any measurement of success on the back end. Thus, who knows if > the SOA provided any business value? Also, there are no clear objectives. > > Massimo Pezzini, research vice president and fellow at Gartner, said that > many companies were approaching SOA projects with excessive expectations and > little awareness of the effort, resources and time needed to achieve any > benefits. > > Some SOA projects are perceived to have failed when in fact there are > simply no well established metrics to evaluate success," he said. > > Folks, you can't figure out if SOA is going to have any business value > without doing a business case up front. This means understanding your core > needs and how SOA will create an architecture that solves actual problems, > and not just looking to push out an SOA because it seems like the right > thing to do. > > The metrics/analysis are pretty simple: > > 1. What are the current inefficiencies within the enterprise > architecture, and how much do you think that's costing the business? > 2. What is the value of reuse, and how much reuse can you expect? > 3. What is the value of agility? > 4. What is the estimated cost of the project? > 5. What are the estimated benefits from the dollars spent? > > More importantly, how we define success -- or when we've achieved the > objectives of the project? > > There's no excuse for leaving the ROI analysis out of this process. You've > been hearing that from me for years, so go run some numbers." > > You can read this at: http://www.infoworl > d.com/d/architecture/soa-roi-does-not-seem-be-priority-265 > > Gervas > > > -- Med vänliga hälsningar Herbjörn Wilhelmsen
