Are you surprised that Oracle Fusion was not in the limelight during the recent Oracle OpenWorld 2008 event?. Well, it looks like there are valid reasons. For one, Oracle Fusion Apps may not be available to the customers until 2010. And the rest of the reasons follow...
I have always questioned the value of 'Big SOA' as called by ERP vendors. And this recent CIO article only helps to validate my opinion. Some of the important observations from the article:
1. It is going to be hard to justify a ROI for the new product (Fusion)
2. There is no competitive pressure from other vendors like Microsoft and SAP to achieve a faster time-to-market
3. Above all, there is no pressure / demand from customers for the new product
Same goes with SAP's SOA story as well. But, SAP is committing billions of dollars towards revamping their product and creating a completely new breed of ecosystem to support ESOA. But, What is the business case for an existing SAP ERP customer to move to ESOA ecosystem?. I have not found a compelling answer yet.
Given the fact that SAP/Microsoft and Oracle are delaying their SOA offerings,Guess who is benefitting from it?. Its none other than IBM. If an existing ERP customer wants to do SOA 'today', the cohesive & comprehensive solution could be built out using IBM SOA infrastructure.
Am not trying to sell IBM products here. But the message I wanted to pass across is that 'There is no SOA without a compelling business case. And Make sure you have one before deep diving into SOA, especially Big SOA'.
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