The Cost of Integration Software

Risaris recently was runner up in the Most Innovative Company category at the KIS Partnering Forum. During the presentation the question of the business model was raised. The SOA Gateway model is designed so that an organization only pays for what it uses in a fully featured product suite. As the organization implements more projects with the SOA Gateway they must pay more and obviously when projects are terminated or retired, they pay less. Contrast this with other integration suites which generally require an extermely large up front fee plus yearly maintenance based on this fee. This SOA Gateway approach has the following benefits to the customer:

• It is far easier to measure the return on investment for each individual integration project.
  
  
• Each project must justify only its own integration cost and not the cost of an entire suite.
  
  
• Each project is likely to be paid for by specific parts of an organization. Using usage based licensing, each part of the organization may be charged exactly the cost of their project.
  
  
• The SOA Gateway makes existing data and business logic available as a serice. This means that not only do you get the immediate ROI for the first project but the service may be reused again and again in other projects meaning there is continuing ROI from the integration effort.

The review panel felt that this is not how organizations wished to buy this type of technology which I found very interesting. What would lend an organization to want to spend more money than it must on an integration technology ? There is obviously a degree of trust required that the software will do what is claimed, however, when the benefits are so large and the entry costs are so low (as it is usage based) what would prevent organizations from trying this ? I felt it was an interesting reflection on buiness that they would prefer to be sold an expensively price integration suite for their needs rather than use a product which can turn an integration effort into a form of commodity where you simply buy what you need off the shelf as and when you need it.

John Power - SOA Gateway Usage Based Pricing