SOA initiatives have gathered momentum in the past year with more enterprises either implementing SOA or considering implementing in the near future. The implementations we studied reveal that one of the critical challenges in SOA is designing an effective governance mechanism. A good understanding of governance concepts is essential to implementing and operating a successful SOA. Reliable governance for SOA leads to a manifold increase in an enterprise's ability to achieve the goal of business agility through SOA.

Defining IT Governance
The IT Governance Institute defines IT governance as "a structure of relationships and processes to control the enterprise in order to achieve the enterprise's goals by adding value while balancing risk versus return over IT and its processes." Another definition by Peter Weill describes IT governance as "specifying the framework for decision rights and accountabilities to encourage desirable behavior in the use of IT." The objective of IT governance is to assist enterprises in leveraging IT to achieve business goals, while governance is essentially the structure, the roles, and the responsibilities that help deliver IT services effectively and efficiently.