I had some interesting responses to my post yesterday relating to SOA projects, and cutting the budget. From Joe McKendrick's blog: "As I observed in a post just a couple of days ago, Brenda Michelson spoke to various SOA Consortium members, and the consensus was that SOA efforts would press on through a rocky economy, and even help to better streamline operations. Are SOA projects typically viewed as overhead, I had some interesting responses to my post yesterday relating to SOA projects, and cutting the budget. From Joe McKendrick’s blog: “As I observed in a post just a couple of days ago, Brenda Michelson spoke to various SOA Consortium members, and the consensus was that SOA efforts would press on through a rocky economy, and even help to better streamline operations. Are SOA projects typically viewed as overhead, or are they seen as an effective mechanism to help organizations better manage costs? How would your company view SOA if it had to trim its IT budget?” Joe even put up a poll around this topic…check it out. Another more business-oriented post came from Alastair Bathgate. I thought his insights where most helpful. “My personal view is that budget holders will give much more support to business case and $ ROI arguments than any other justifications. However, the current climate is very short term. Most enterprises are focused on short term cash and short term profit. Directors are targeted on short term measures. They are also ever less likely to hold their role for more than 2 years. So when you try to justify your project, bear this in mind. There is no point in demonstrating that your $25M investment will pay back handsomely over 10 years. You must find ways of proving that your project will deliver incremental short term benefits so the longer term project funds itself and delivers ongoing business value as well.” I can’t argue with that, and even during good times demonstrating short term tactical ROI, along with longer term strategic ROI, is just a good idea to keep the SOA momentum moving along. What’s frustrating about all this is that SOA is really about a systemic change in the way we do IT, and not really a “special project.” Within most enterprises SOA, like data warehousing, EAI, B2B, etc., are all considered to be “newer technologies,” and/or approaches, and thus should be considered an “experiment” in the minds of those writing the budgets. SOA is not about technology, it’s about architecture. The sooner everyone gets that the sooner it won’t be on the list of “special projects.” Software Development