Service My Oriented Architectures
November 24th, 2004 by Adam Cuothe
Thanks to Johanna Ambrosio at TechTarget for the article on web services ROI
Another problem in calculating Web services ROI is that “we don’t really have very good spending estimates,” Gartner’s Harris said. “There are different pieces needed from different vendors, and I haven’t seen anything that’s really apples-to-apples at this point.” Without a good understanding of the budget outlay needed, ROI is impossible to nail down accurately, particularly for larger and more complex types of Web services projects.
No offense Johanna, your article is just fine, I love quotes from the Gartner jello factory of babble-heads. The one Johanna cited above for example… different is different and when different isn’t an apple just like the other apples then it’s really hard say if it is or if it isn’t uniquely different as much as it is an apple. That’s my take on the wobbly nutritional nothingness we got as a quote. I guess the article was balanced with a more fatty Gartner quote, not to mention a few gems from ZapThink, which were certainly more interesting (they offer clues but confirm the lack of ROI).
What am I interested in here? The writing? Yes. I also like (and maybe this is your interest as well) the way our IT boom has gone from having fast, easy-to-use client desktop applications, to stumbling with web form interconnectivity? I don’t understand, and in a way, that’s what this reduces to. I know it isn’t fair to talk about things on the “wrong” level but I’ve seen plenty of attempts to come up with ROI calculations for more complex and messy interactions. Service me with a little bitty SOA college try.
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