business roi Resources on ZDNet

ZDNet Resources

'Let market forces drive SOA' discussion, continued: There has been an interesting chat going on across the blogosphere as to whether the best approach to SOA development is top-down and bottom-up, or whether to start small or start in a big way.Ian Thomas recently weighed in on the discussion, agreeing with Nick Malik that neither top-down nor...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-08-03
The awkward dance between BPM and SOA: Does business process management (BPM) need SOA to go forward? Does SOA need BPM to be relevant? Are they one in the same? Or are they completely different animals?Depending upon whom you read, BPM is either worlds apart from SOA, or the two are fused right down to the...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-08-02
'Whole-brained' enterprises need SOA: here are the numbers to prove it: Okay, okay, we get it -- business and IT need to be aligned. They're obviously not in alignment, or we wouldn't have 50,000 conference speakers and analyst reports telling us so. So, let's have at it, and align away.Finally, a study that provides hard numbers on the connection between business-IT...; Tags: SOA Surveys and Research, General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-08-01
How to build SOA when executives don't care: When it comes to moving SOA forward when all of the top brass hasn't signed off on the concept (or is just totally oblivious to it), a "middle-out" approach may work best.Of course, we all work in organizations with savvy, totally forward-thinking top managers, don't we? But for those few...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-07-26
Let market forces drive SOA adoption: A report out of ComputerWeekly notes that in its latest survey of 100 top IT executives, 77% now "believe it is getting easier to demonstrate the business value of IT" -- up from 66% in February.Statistical margin of error (10%) aside, what happened over the last five months to make...; Tags: Business ROI, General, SOA Surveys and Research; Blog posts 2007-07-24

SOA value to business: There's hope in aligning IT and the business. A report in ComputerWeekly states that based on a survey of 100 top IT executives, 77% say it's "getting easier to demonstrate the business value of IT" -- up from 66% in February.The first question that comes to mind, of course, is...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-07-24
How will we look back on SOA in 2020?: What will speakers at conferences in the future be saying about today's great SOA movement? Will they be looking back and talking about all the mistaken assumptions that were made about SOA?Maybe the opposite will be true. Canadian Technology News reports that Gary Doucet, chief architect for the Canadian...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-07-17
More top-down versus bottom-up SOA: Todd Biske provides additional insights on the top-down versus bottom-up SOA discussion that recently appeared on this blogsite.Which approach is better? Neither and both, Todd explains, who notes that "there aren't too many companies that can take a completely top-down approach."The bottom line is that "there's no way you can...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-07-16
The middle road between Service-Oriented Anarchy and Soviet-Oriented Architecture: I got some interesting feedback on my recent post on bottom-up (or should that be "bottoms-up") SOA, and wanted to surface some of the discussion.The gist of my original post was based on Nick Malik's observation that bottom-up SOA approaches are "actively harmful to the enterprise as a whole and...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-07-16
Survey hints at SOA skills shortages to come: IBM commissioned a survey of attendees at its recent SOA customer confab, and concluded that SOA -- at least among this group -- is finally evolving from an IT activity to that of a more strategic business initiative. IBM said that the strategic decisions to adopt SOA "are shifting away...; Tags: Business ROI, General, SOA Surveys and Research, Web Services; Blog posts 2007-07-11
Turn your SOA into a HOA (human oriented architecture): In light of all the pushing to bring IT to closer to the business, Dana Gardner is proposing an experiment. That is, take an accountant -- or better yet, CFO -- to lunch, to see how much they understand service-oriented architecture, and use the occasion to sell them on the...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-07-08
Another view: avoid bottom-up SOA like the plague: Just the other week, I posted the case for Start-Small SOA, which not only helps enterprise service developers and consumers learn as they go, but also deliver a growing series of incremental wins that will help build a constituency of support.However, not everyone buys into the "start-small SOA" case, especially...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-07-07
Ten SOA business realities: This past week, I had the opportunity to do a presentation at SOA World East in New York, in which I explored some of the issues facing organizations making the crossing from JBOWS (Just a Bunch of Web Services, of course) to fully functioning SOA.I discussed some of the Evans...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-06-29
Survey: mainframes now being service-enabled, not replaced: A new survey confirms what many of us already suspected: that mainframe and other legacy systems are no longer being ripped up and replaced. Instead, the operative term is now "modernization." And SOA has helped fuel this sea change.A new survey finds modernizing is preferable to replacing Big Iron. Times...; Tags: Web Services, Vendor Watch, SOA Surveys and Research, General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-06-29
Analyst: companies not ready for long SOA journey: Anne Thomas Manes of the Burton Group has a gift for seeing through all the muck and hype to give us a clear picture on what's really going on with SOA.Paul Krill was on hand at this week's Burton Group conference, and provides an account of Anne's latest speech, in...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-06-28
Fellow ZDNet bloggers explore the hard road to SOA: Notice how nobody is disputing that something is holding back SOA? What is that something?Two ZDNet blogging colleagues recently provided their thoughts on this topic. Dana Gardner, for one, says its hard to light a fire under businesses to get SOA moving.TechTarget's Rich Seeley interviewed Dana about the inertia that...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-06-27
SOA business case: smaller is better: There's been quite a bit of debate as of late as to whether SOA should start small and incrementally, or be introduced from the top down as a transformative venture. The word out of the recent BEA Systems executives annual Arch 2 Arch customer conference in Nice, France, is 'start...; Tags: Vendor Watch, General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-06-22
O'Toole: The era of Big SOA is over: In previous blogs, we talked about the oxymoron of "SOA Suites" (SOA is supposed to free us from vendor lock-in, right?), and the growing tendency of vendors to want to package anything and everything into Big Honking SOA suites.In a recently published interview at TechTarget, Cape Clear's Annrai O'Toole says...; Tags: Business ROI, General, Vendor Watch; Blog posts 2007-06-15
What's the difference between an 'SOA' and 'enterprise' archtect'?: What exactly is an 'SOA architect'? Is it any different from an 'enterprise architect'?Those are the questions taken up at the most recently published SOA BriefingsDirect podcast, led by ZDNet colleague Dana Gardner. Steve Nunn, vice president and COO of The Open Group, joined John Bell, an enterprise...; Tags: General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-06-11
REST for the SOA-weary: Oliver Widder has done it again with another great "Geek and Poke" commentary on the ironies of enterprise SOA. This latest cartoon was inspired, at least in part, by my recent post on the rise of REST. By the way, happy first anniversary on the series, Oliver --...; Tags: Web Services, General, Business ROI; Blog posts 2007-06-07