{"id":258,"date":"2007-03-27T07:00:59","date_gmt":"2007-03-27T15:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=258"},"modified":"2007-03-27T07:00:59","modified_gmt":"2007-03-27T15:00:59","slug":"soa-debate-on-measuring-the-roi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/soa-debate-on-measuring-the-roi\/","title":{"rendered":"SOA: Debate on Measuring the ROI"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Datamation\u00a0article<\/a> in Does SOA have an ROI<\/em> has kicked off a debate about SOA and its benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A clear measure of SOA’s success is the overwhelming acceptance of\u00a0it as a best-practice architecture.\u00a0 Gartner found that 44 percent of companies with less than 1000 employees consider deploying SOA for their organizations as\u00a0a high-priority.\u00a0 And at big companies, those with 40,000 or more employees, 67 percent say that they will be using SOA before the end of 2006.<\/p>\n

But what is SOA contributing in terms of reduced costs and ROI?\u00a0 Some think that the ROI is very hard to measure.\u00a0 Gartner’s Randy Heffner says “Any attempt to assign a specific ROI to SOA should be viewed with heavy skepticism”.<\/p>\n

The Gartner argument is that SOA is an architecture and platform — not a solution, and ROI should be measured against solutions.\u00a0 SOA may be contributing some weighted amount towards the success of\u00a0a complete solution but exactly what weight percentage to assign to SOA\u00a0is hard to quantify.<\/p>\n

Short term, adoption of SOA may require more planning and that in turn can mean higher budget and result in longer schedules.\u00a0 SOA is better viewed as a more strategic move rather than one that immediately contributes to the bottom line.<\/p>\n

Gartner notes that longer term SOA’s benefits\u00a0can be\u00a0many and include:<\/p>\n