Yesterday, someone asked me why I was lukewarm about SOA. I love the basic concept of web services - what's not to like? The promise of sharable services for currency conversion, shipment tracking - so much more. My problem is as an industry we do not like to share - unless channel masters like Fedex set standards. And vendor channel masters like SAP and Oracle do not do architectural shifts in their customer bases elegantly or efficiently..
So, today I get my copy of Consulting Magazine. And there is an article on SOA titled "Let's swing, Baby" which starts with "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"
"By 2006, Gartner predicts more than 60% of the $ 527 b IT professional services market will be related to exploitation of Web services....."
Let's say Gartner is off by a factor of 3. That's still $ 100 b a year, and the SOA transitions should go on for at least 5 years. That's $ 500 b + just in professional services. I like web services but show me the ROI for that big an investment. May be cheaper to buy Fedex, UPS and a few banks to get those services.
Good ole days? Sounds like a champagne soak.
