Exploratory case study research on SOA investment decision processes in Austria

Abstract

Aligning information systems to financial key performance indicators and measure its returns has become one of the most important topics over the last years. However, despite the growing investments of many corporations into IT in general, an increasing number of questions and concerns have been arising to the effectiveness of these investments and their payoffs. Hence, an evaluation of an enterprise's IT architecture, as a part of IT investments, has been increasing its role throughout organizations worldwide. Numerous conceptual studies and tools to predict the business value of IT/SOA investment portfolios are being offered; nevertheless most of them substantially lack accuracy. For this purpose, we empirically investigate the application of SOA investment criteria in large Austrian corporations, which will be realized through a multiple case study collection reflecting current investment strategies and measurements. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.