SOA Success: The proof is in the payback

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Bob Rhubart's Blog | January 15, 2008   9:12 AM | Comments (0)

Writing in  New Tools Connect SOA to Business Success for InsuranceNetworking.com, Joe McKendrick offers several tips for selling SOA to management. ROI, of course, plays an essential role in the process:

Show how success will be measured: Key performance metrics, tied to specific areas of the business, will help calculate the return SOA is delivering in specific areas. Calculating return on investment need not be a complex undertaking. One expert, Ed Kourany, executive director of worldwide consulting for BEA Systems, San Jose, Calif., says that calculating the potential ROI of SOA doesn’t have to be an exacting exercise down to the penny, but the calculation can be a “just-good-enough number.” Arriving at ROI calculations is a complex undertaking. Kourany says he has seen three drivers to SOA value: business optimization, business agility and business innovation. Improving time to market is perhaps the greatest source of value that he has seen with his clients. One BEA client, Prudential, instituted a customer service portal that reduced call center time to the tune of more than $20 million a year. The key to measuring future SOA value delivered is to first establish a baseline of the company’s current costs and status, Kourany points out. “Where am I today?”

One element of the calculation of the ROI of SOA is the reuse value of individual services. For insight into determining that value, check out Measuring SOA Success, a free BEA white paper.

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