ACADEMIA

CEOs who view internal IT software development as a "money pit" should think again, according to Wayne Kernochan, President, Infostructure Associates. Infostructure Associates just issued its yearly 135 page report on the development solution industry, entitled "Web Services Development Solutions Report: Speed to Value." According to Infostructure Associates research, SMBs and ISVs that choose the right development toolset and development platform report that they are able to deliver a typical mission-critical application 9 months to 1 1/2 years faster than their competitors. "Approaches such as offshore development/outsourcing, formal development methodologies, or open-source programming caused relatively little impact on time-to-market of important applications. Instead, features such as industry- specific components, support for transactional coding, and ability to generate code semi-automatically from designs proved much more effective," Kernochan says. Some of the report's highlights include: * Good development solutions today can deliver major speed to value, reducing the product lifecycle of a mission-critical application by as much as 70%. This, in turn, can reduce the application's TCO by as much as 40%, and increase the application's ROI by as much as 50%. * The sweet spot of development solution use, which recently has been located in new Web application development and then in upgrading existing applications for e-business, is now shifting toward leveraging databases for competitive-advantage e-information. * Administrative people costs are steadily and inexorably increasing as a proportion of application lifecycle costs. A robust development solution and development methodology can reduce application downtime by as much as 40%, and can be combined with a "near-lights-out" database for total improvements in three-year TCO of 20%. A leading independent IT industry analyst firm, Infostructure Associates focuses on the role that information infrastructure can play in creating the "proactive enterprise." Infostructure Associates specializes in development solutions, databases, and related software infrastructure such as EII (Enterprise Information Integration), as well as their application to new technologies such as Web services, grid computing, and Business Process Integration. Infostructure Associates is located in Wellesley, MA, and is a Valley View Ventures, Inc. (V3) affiliate. V3 is the leading broker of independent IT analysts and the fastest growing group of IT analysts in the world. Go to http://www.valleyviewventures.com/ for more information.