August 2004 Cutter Benchmark Review: The Business Value of a Service-Oriented Approach

by Michael Rosen

I was recently presenting some recommendations on architectural direction and strategy to senior staff and one of the business line managers asked a very good question: "What value does this service-oriented architecture approach give me?" Specifically, he meant business value -- or in other words, put the IT recommendations into business terms. This is always a challenge for IT, but I think I hit upon a good explanation with the following scenario.