I get calls and e-mails from a lot of SOA vendors asking me to blog or write about their product...and fill up my inbox with megabytes of white papers and data sheets. I always ask for case studies, which is where the rubber meets the road, but I never hear from most them again. In short, vendor/SOA case studies are hard to come by.

However, I did have a couple of guys from Oracle grab me after my ROI talk at the last InfoWorld SOA Executive Summit. They were working on some research around ROI and case studies and wanted some input, which I gave them. The end result was this paper: Bringing SOA Value Patterns to Life.

If you can get beyond the marketing message (they are Oracle, after all) to the case studies towards the back, there are some good examples of early implementations of SOA, including a college that created a "SOA by accident." I love that one. Moreover, the more practical mainframe modernization SOA project case study...or putting SOA lipstick on your mainframe pig.

What I like about this kind of research is that they are studying the patterns of use, and thus will have a better understanding about the functionality of their products, or better yet, required future functionality of their products. Also, not only looking at how the technology solves technical problems, but the value that it brings to the bottom line of the business...that is most important.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on August 18, 2006 06:24 AM