What would you do, if you were an enterprise IT leader faced with perfectly opposing analyst views on the question of SOA and ROI? As of this morning, this is the dilemma facing IT leaders evaluating SOA, courtesy of Macehiter Ward-Dutton and Nucleus Research.
One the one hand, a Nucleus Research/KnowledgeStorm benchmark survey on SOA deployments and ROI finds low overall adoption of SOA and not much evidence of ROI where it has been deployed.
On the other hand, Macehiter Ward-Dutton takes a dim view of ROI-of-SOA exercises to begin with, in their blog post, The pointless search for SOA ROI.
These analysts are not simply disagreeing on shades of gray. Their arguments nullify each other.
This situation is not all that common. When it does happen, the resulting press coverage tends to focus on point-counterpoint between the analysts. That makes for nice vanity press, perhaps — if you like a good cat fight. However, I’m curious about how this type of situation affects thinking among IT management and IT management consultants.
Maybe enterprise thought leaders like James McGovern and James Taylor (when he is back from holiday) will weigh in on this — not only with their views on the particular question of whether SOA ROI is or is not a meaningful pursuit, but also on the impact of being faced with diametrically opposed analyst opinions on a topic as complex as SOA ROI.
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