Expect agility first, cost efficiency comes later, much later
Monday, June 23rd, 2008As a follow on to my Financial Times article here, I’d like to further point out that as many debate how long it takes for the benefits of SOA to be realized, proper context of which benefits is important, because all benefits are not created equal. The statement I referred to in my article by Larry Ellison here where he claims the benefits of SOA will be realized in 10 to 20 years time, after applications have been rewritten, but the benefit-context he’s likely referring couldn’t be agility because his assumption that all applications need to be rewritten is completely contrary to SOA principles. A core principle of SOA lies in leveraging prior IT investments by decomposing existing applications (not rewriting them), allowing for flexibility in meeting changing business demand. The key benefit-context of SOA is agility. Perhaps Larry is talking to those that expect to see cost savings in the first budget year of an SOA project, which takes much longer. Still, rewriting entire applications is a bit extreme, and often fatal.
The proper focus should be on agility because phases of implementation are yield early returns, yielding benefit along the way, and resulting in solution flexibility early on. SOA will continue to turn applications into collections of loosely coupled services by unlocking buried or hidden components, making them more accessible. Although SOA is technology (depending upon protocols and technical infrastructure), its primary purpose is in responding rapidly to constantly shifting business needs. As I indicated in my FT article: “It’s about business. An agility-based and business-focused mindset is required in order to realize benefits early. Agility refers to the flexibility in implementing a business process rapidly and perhaps in phases if needed. In contrast to a rip-and-replace mentality for accommodating a business requirement, SOA endeavors to leave most of the existing applications and infrastructure in place.” Focus on agility, and benefits will roll in much sooner.