Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
flexibility, services reuse, faster time-to-market, strategic reasons or focus on key
business processes. Some of the companies had conducted pilot projects prior to their
investment decision, while others went straight to implementation. In none of the
cases stakeholders were fully aware of all the costs and benefits of SOA implementa-
tions with regards specifically to their company. However, it must be stated, that all
of the interview partners were satisfied with their investments into SOA. In spite of
the numerous existing IT valuation methods, advanced techniques have hardly been
used and managers interviewed in this study predominantly used methods they intui-
tively understood [21]. Some of the reasons put forward for the failure to monitor
benefits of their investments are [22]:
•
Assessment of benefits was not required due to business strategy guidelines
•
Difficulty to asses benefits after project implementation
In contrast to initial SOA investments, the evaluation focus of continuous projects in
SOA environments observed shift to more quantitative aspects, with ROI in various
forms serving as primary evaluation metric, while qualitative aspects have been play-
ing a secondary role at this stage. Interestingly, some interview partners have given
contradictory statements about certain benefits of SOA, such as reuse. It became also
transparent that still IT employees are responsible for decisions related to SOA budg-
eting and spending, which is highly questionable [23]. The main reasons for the in-
consistency of SOA investment evaluation included the choice of incomprehensive
evaluation methodologies, inadequate assessment of inputs and outputs and the com-
plexity behind establishing the total value of SOA [24], therefore the most common
and accepted measure to justify IT investments based on this study has been a static
Return on Investment (ROI) calculation. Nevertheless, it is uncertain if such a finan-
cial measure and other metrics can reflect intangible benefits, long-term strategic
advantages and also the risk that enfold SOA-related investments.
Table 1.
Cross-Case Analysis
Case
Banking
Teleco
Ministry
Media
Data S ervice Provider Insurance
Investment Criteria
SOA Pilot
9
9
Transparency
9
Efficiency
9
9
9
9
Flexibility
99
9
Re -use
99
9
Time
9
9
Strategy
9
9
Proce ss Focus
9
9
Costs
9999
9
9
Revenue Increase
9
RO I
9
