{"id":1290,"date":"2008-04-07T12:40:56","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T18:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/cote\/2008\/04\/07\/the-idea-of-soa-ibm-impact-day-two\/"},"modified":"2008-04-07T12:40:56","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T18:40:56","slug":"the-idea-of-soa-ibm-impact-day-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/2008\/04\/07\/the-idea-of-soa-ibm-impact-day-one\/","title":{"rendered":"The Idea of SOA – IBM Impact Day One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"IBM<\/a><\/p>\n

IBM wants its SOA to be about two things: scaling and using technology to make the company money.<\/p>\n

What is SOA?<\/h2>\n

Drew Cary is MC’ing the event. Looking up at the mega-screen after several muy caro<\/i> jokes, he said:<\/p>\n

\nI don’t even know what we’re sellin’. They’ve explained it to me 10 times, but I still don’t know. Yeah…’Smart SOA.’ Not that stupid<\/i> SOA our competitors are selling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That about sums up the The Emperor’s New Clothes<\/i><\/a> side of the SOA-camp better than any other explanation we’ll probably come to this week. I saw excellent on IBM for being able to laugh at itself like this: it made the follow-up a bit more believable.<\/p>\n

Makin’ Money<\/h3>\n

That follow-up was delivered by Robert LeBlanc<\/a>, Steve Mills<\/a>, Tom Rosamilia<\/a>, and, of course, Sandy Carter<\/a>. There was also a customer demo from Harley-Davidson’s CIO, Jim Haney. (Thanks to Dana Gardner for catching the line-up<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In brief, as I Twittered<\/a>, SOA is an idea above all else. An idea that states, the old tried-and-true enterprise IT motto of the past decade: align IT with business. LeBlanc gave a 10,000 foot definition of what this means that smacked of SAP-ery: all you tech people need to know your business’ KPIs<\/a>, and make sure they keep doing well. Technology is just used to make money, the rest are details, as any Jonah will tell you<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As we discussed in a panel last week at MuleCon<\/a>, getting tech people to take on that mind-set is tough. We’re not yet trained to think that way, and as I like to joke, those who do get promoted to management. There were no easy answers on the panel; we’ll see if IBM has some. LeBlanc did have a good opening motivator: be indispensable, not just irreplaceable. Don’t get off-shored, bub.<\/p>\n

As an enterprise, the alternative to getting your own people to think like MBA-programmers is paying the high fees of outside consultants to do it. Sounds like good revenue if you can get it.<\/p>\n

Also, as if by coincidence, see Galen Gruman’s story on a recent Hackett report<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nIronically, they achieve those financial efficiencies [generat(ing) $1.1 billion more operating profit on an annual basis and $645 million higher net profit] as an effect of their IT business value management approach, not from a focus on cost containment. Most companies — those that don’t get the strategic IT value — focus on maximizing the efficiency of IT, viewing it simply as a cost to be contained, said Eric Dorr, a senior business adviser at Hackett.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(I have no idea how credible Hackett is, but it fits well into the narrative from Impact.)<\/p>\n

Scaling<\/h3>\n

The other angle hit-up by all was IBM’s differentiation here. The claim is that IBM can scale and SOA. One assumes both technologically and service\/business-wise.<\/p>\n

Here, there’s a mattress stuffed with numbers:<\/p>\n