Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » When to Buy, When to Build

June 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

When to Buy, When to Build

TAGS: Applications, Infrastructure

Dave Linthicum outlines six steps to follow to make a build vs. buy decision. (Spoiler: Ultimately you will probably need to do both.)

With service-oriented architecture (SOA), Ajax, the enterprise service bus (ESB) and other new technologies maturing, application architects and business analysts have tough decisions to make about whether to buy packaged applications, build them, or more likely, do some combination of the two.

The buy-versus-build question is even more important now that we have infrastructure to support the mixing and matching of applications and services. Best practices are beginning to emerge, and sources for applications and services are rapidly multiplying, including open source, new SOA interfaces for traditional packaged enterprise applications and SaaS offerings. The SaaS vendors, in particular, are making new and innovative applications and services available at price points that were previously unheard of.

So, how do you know when to buy and when to build? There are no hard-and-fast rules, but this article presents a six-step approach to make sure you're making the right calls.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 17, 2007 10:22 PM

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