Au Contraire

Donald Rippert, CTO of Accenture writes in FT (saw it courtesy of Sadagopan) that the major reason enterprises should adopt SOA is because ISVs like SAP and Oracle are rearchitecting their own suites on SOA.

"For those still sceptical, it is hard to deny SOA’s importance if you consider the marketplace evidence. Virtually every leading vendor of software development tools and business applications is supporting the adoption of the technology. The largest forces in packaged software are employing SOA to deal with their own complexity."

My counterpoint : Look at how long it is taking the ISVs and how much it has already cost them. And they did it themselves, not with a much more expensive SI like Accenture. Sorry, I am not just picking on Accenture but the whole SI community is gearing up for a SOA fiesta.

Here's Mike Liebow from IBM in this interview about SOA consultants:

"Tell me, who doesn't have an army? Are you telling me Microsoft doesn't have an army for SOA or that SAP, which is investing in a huge services organization, doesn't have an army? Who's kidding who here? I find it particularly amusing when those organizations announce services capabilities a week later. Talk about armies, Microsoft has 300,000 consultants. I don't come anywhere close."

As I wrote in SOA=SOS, it is time to pause when Consulting Magazine reports "SOA promises to bring back the demand for IT professional services just like the good ole days, like client/server computing, like the e-Business frenzy"

If you are an ISV, you likely have invested a lot in SOA. Go a step further and invest in automation of SOA implementation, to minimize SI labor. This is about web services, not labor services.

In technology, we sometime confusedly use the term "partner". For an ISV, your customer is your true partner, not your SI buddies. Their armies are actually scaring your customers. And making the already questionable payback from SOA look even less attractive.

Comments

[Dennis Howlett]

I saw this article and only got three lines in before I tought: 'who wrote this crock of...' then when I saw it was Accenture's CTO, I clicked away. I"m surprised the FT allowed self-serving content of this kind onto its online presence. No ability to comment, no third party confirmation of any statements made, no third party evidence but opinion masquerading as fact.

This is a dangerous precedent.