9
NOVEMBER,
2004
IBM’s
new SOA curate’s egg?
The announcement is, at least in part, both good and sensible. IBM Global
Services (IGS) (for unsurprisingly it is they) has announced a new advisory
practice that is aimed to help users build out and manage SOAs. This is
certainly good in way, for it gives enterprises a reasonable degree of
comfort as many of the move to what will be a scary new environment; good
old Global Services will be there to do it, and keep it going. In a world
where getting new services in and running quickly can garner more return
than getting an arguably better solution in, but more slowly, this can
have real business benefits.
But – and it is quite a sizeable one – there are some interesting
aspects of this that need further examination. For example, Phil Fersht
of the analyst company, Yankee Group, has been quoted as saying "If
a company can decrease the number of developers on a service architecture
from 25 to 5 in the space of two months, suddenly you are talking the
language of a CIO or CFO." Well yes, it looks good on paper until
you ponder what is then at the other end of this balance. According to
sources, IGS has some 35,000 staff trained in delivering SOAs. That is
a lot to keep in gainful employment, and how many does the typical enterprise
actually need? Also, any one of them is going to charge a good deal of
money to learn what the customer is doing. If that customer has been doing
their job right, their existing staff should have a pretty fair idea already.
Then there is always the traditional problem of such services –
the `hand-off’. Enterprise managers may start by seeing senior,
highly skilled operators, but may soon find themselves handed off to others
who take even longer to learn the actual business.
Lastly, architecting solutions in the new service-based world is about
understanding what the business is about as it grows, develops and continually
changes to meet new marketplace demands - and the finding the most appropriate
technologies to deliver them.
Arguably, that will be better done by having the right people on the ground,
most of the time.
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