The Case for SOA - Harvard Business Review

For those of you interested in the 'business justification' and Return On Investment (ROI) of Services Orientated Architecture (SOA) there is an excellent article in the June 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review (HBR).

Entitled "The Next Revolution in Productivity" the article focuses more on the 'structure' and 'de-composition' of business rather than the technologies required which it argues are not the most difficult part of the exercise. The article discusses that by far the most difficult area of SOA is getting to grips with the need to 'map' the business so its core competency focused areas can be separated from those that can be shared, shifted or automated.

The article concludes with the following gem “New ways of constructing software combined with a computer network that can distribute the modules instantaneously anywhere in the world give executives unprecedented tools for building ultra-efficient and flexible operations”.

Ric Merrifield of Microsoft, known to some of you in the NZ architect community for his work with Microsoft Motion, is one of the major authors.

In New Zealand HBR is available from most of the larger newsagents and bookstores or you may be lucky enough to have access to electronic copy via an EBSCO subscription or similar. Well worth a read to help with those more business focused discussions around SOA.