The SOA Business: What's Behind Skyrocketing Price Hikes?

It is important to understand the relationship between SOA business value and the costs associated with various kinds of change that can take place within the service network.

The diagram below provides a comprehensive model for considering the types of change that can impact an enterprise service network, starting with changing market conditions leading to the impact to the service network and the ripple effects it can bring.

As we have seen, change can be planned and may start all the way over on the left hand side – a decrease in demand for a product results in a business decision to lower prices and promote a product which leads to IT implementing a new application (assembled using existing Web services) which can lead to a drop in service performance resulting in ripple effects and cost.

In other cases, change is sudden and unexpected and can come in from the top – an outsourced Web service providing market quotes for securities fails. This is an immediate and unexpected impact to the service network coming in from the top on the right hand side. Ripple effects follow and costs accumulate.

Sources of change in an enterprise SOA business network.

Whereas the SOA architecture was meant to accelerate the responsiveness of the IT organization, the impact of changes to the service network and the ripple effects that ensue can quickly lead to precisely the opposite result. Change is easy and affordable, but the impact of change (unexpected or planned) can be unmanageable and expensive. The ease and cost-efficiency of change in an unmanaged service network is an illusion, at best.

The diagram below illustrates the net economic result of these skyrocketing costs – an artificial limit on the ability to profitably grow the enterprise service network.

Skyrocketing costs and complexity of an unmanaged service network rapidly make the SOA business approach costly and limit the responsiveness of IT.

Bottom Line: Managing Change is Critical

Rather than freeing IT to be more responsive to changing business needs, the SOA business approach can quickly lead to a reduction in responsiveness and increased costs. In order to truly reap the benefits of the SOA business approach, organizations must have a way to manage the impact of change in their enterprise service network.

For More Information

Understand both SOA business and IT benefits. Download the free white paper, SOA Introduction: IT and Business Perspectives