A recent article in Computing notes that Standard Life (SL) has projected cost-savings of £60m through a programme of service-oriented architecture adoption that started 10 years ago.

At the heart of this saving is reuse of a core set of business services - with services currently being reused in dozens of cases.

As well as the cost-savings, the changes have also enabled SL to bring products to market faster and to move into new markets quicker.

When creating reusable components SL note language, currency and tax regulations as variation points that may require changes in core assets.

Gartner group comment on the balance between making services too business-specific (and hence not reusable) vs. making them too generic (and hence harder to develop and reuse).

David Norton, Gartner’s research director, says “… firms can work around this by finding components that will be core to most business services.” [My emphasis] This is a little vague but I assume he means identifying or designing reusable software components that work within a defined scope rather than searching the open market for them where the organisation would stand less chance of success.