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Recent shifts towards SOA have increased the need for a rational SOA governance strategy. SOAs are much more complicated than traditional programming models – effective implementation requires efficient utilization and re-utilization of resources, something that's extremely difficult without a defined SOA governance strategy. So how do you quantify and qualify the IT or application investments you're making and define a strategy for control and measurement of those investments within an SOA?
Responsibility
Weak governance implies that the IT or business leadership don't have clear ideas of what they're doing and why. Weak governance leads to redundant projects, ineffective applications and IT groups with no clue as to what the business really needs.
Good governance means that you know what you're doing and why. Strong governance maximizes the value of IT investments, improves communication between business and IT, leading to efficient use of resources and good project management.
Management
SOA governance should include the management of individual service lifecycles as well as the management of the infrastructure that supports the SOA.
Through SOA governance, polices are established around services. As organizations deploy more and more SOA based solutions, managers and developers need to shift their focus from simply developing and deploying services to managing, tracking, maintaining and monitoring services and the SOA infrastructure on an on-going basis. That's where good SOA management capabilities and SOA governance policies come into play.
One of the most significant aspects of SOA-based solutions is their flexibility and adaptability. By creating enough process and structure around the services lifecycle, one can ensure consistent development, deployment and management processes. Without slowing the process down or restricting the benefits of SOA, SOA management should be about empowering people and enabling them to create and manage SOA services and infrastructures in a structured and accountable way.
Business and IT in Harmony
SOA has been and will always be about uniting business and IT. Therefore, SOA governance needs to leverage a tight relationship between business needs and objectives and the IT delivery of the services and the infrastructure. SOA solutions need to be managed from both a vertical IT project perspective (how well are we doing on this project) as well as a horizontal infrastructure perspective (how well does this service fit into our overall strategy and future needs?).
When done right, SOA governance can help create more flexible SOA environments, reduce the amount of time it takes to develop and manage SOA environments, mitigate risks, ensure consistency across services and business processes and increase opportunities for reuse. SOA management can also help create closer and more effective teams, establish metrics and ways to measure performance and establish broader and better communications between the business and IT side of the house.
Over the past few years, SOA governance has evolved and matured due to the increase in SOA projects and infrastructures.
Phased Approach to SOA Governance
- Establish a Need:
- define appropriate policies and methods for enforcing them
- establish governance frameworks
- create centers of excellence (collect best practices)
- develop operational procedures
- Begin evaluating SOA management tools – Open Source options are available
- Deploy management solutions incrementally
- Monitor and manage the services and processes on an on-going basis
SOA Governance Players
SOA vendors have shown increasing focus on providing more effective SOA management and governance solutions as the market matures:
Allow us to implement a strong SOA governance solution that maximizes the value of IT investments, improves communication between business and IT, resulting in efficient use of resources and good project management within your enterprise. Contact us today - there is absolutely no obligation.
About XWebServices, Inc.
XWebServices, Inc. is a California Corporation based in Simi Valley, California. Extensive experience in Enterprise Architecture
primarily in Financial Services, Insurance, HealthCare and Real Estate / Mortgage Banking fields, a U.S. based team of SOA Architects
and Consultants focusing on Enterprise SOA, planning and design, an offshore Software Development team based in Romania and partnerships
with Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Composite Applications and SOA Governance industry leaders have positioned XWebServices, Inc. as a
SOA Consulting, SOA Services, SOA Solutions and Web Services Provider leader.
Visit our SOA Portal - SOAHub.com,
a portal dedicated to the advancement of Service Oriented Architecture, featuring Enterprise Architecture guides, white papers, tutorials
and case studies, Consulting Services, a Web Services Directory, directories of SOA Services / Service Providers and
SOA Solutions / Solution Providers, News, an Online Forum (Message Boards) and a Jobs / Employment Opportunities directory.
Website: http://www.xwebservices.com
Email: info@xwebservices.com
Phone: 805.587.9361
[ download this SOA White Paper (PDF) ]
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