Make or Buy: The Jury is Out

There's a good article in InfoWorld about the age old IT dilemma of "build vs. buy." The consensus seems to be to buy when automating commodity processes and build when dealing with core differentiating processes (a la Wal-Mart). SOA seems to have made the "build" option more palatable.

The worst of both worlds is to buy a huge system and then heavily modify it to match your old systems and processes.

Another up and coming choice for many organizations is hosted solutions. Many companies are doing "all of the above," with a mix of packaged products, in-house offerings, and hosted solutions for a best-of-breed mix.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Everybody knows that the more standardized you are and the more you buy off-the-shelf, the more cost effective it will be for both implementation and ongoing maintenance,” says Mark Lutchen, former global CIO of PricewaterhouseCoopers, now head of the firm’s IT Effectiveness practice.

On the other hand, executives such as Bob Laird, IT chief architect at MCI (now part of Verizon Business), sing the familiar refrain of in-house
development: “Where we tend to invest is where we can get incremental revenue … or competitive advantage,” he says.

As with many modern enterprises, Laird and team have recast their in-house development efforts within an SOA, enabling them to reuse rather than build from scratch. “Part of the decision is to look at your legacy applications and analyze what legacy you have that still has business value,” he says.

For more, read on...

To build or to buy IT applications? InfoWorld Analysis 2006-02-13 By Polly S. Traylor