SOA governance

SOA Governance is an emerging discipline which enables organizations to provide guidance and control of their service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives and programs.

Many organizations are attempting to transition from silo-oriented applications to agile, composite clients and services. This transition requires that the 'Service' become the new unit of work. The I.T. organization must now manage these services across the entire lifecycle, from inception through analysis, design, construction, testing, deployment and production execution. At each stage, certain rules or policies must be carried out to ensure that the services provide value to the consumers. SOA Governance is the discipline of creating policies, communicating and enforcing them.

The policies will typically fall into 1 of 3 categories:
1. SOA Portfolio Governance - Portfolio Governance deals with the analysis and identification of potential services (and consumers)
2. SOA Asset Governance - Asset Governance pertains to the use of policies on assets that are created. For example, it is common for organizations to have policies related to the standards used to implement services
3. SOA Process Governance - Process Governance covers the steps that an organization should take to ensure that the SOA program achieves optimal economic benefit (e.g., register service, discover service, virtualize service, etc.)

Technologies Required for Governance

Registry – a catalog of services within an SOA
Repository – centrally-managed data storage for all governance policies and metadata
Policy Enforcement – Policies for managing service
Governance Rules Engine - Incorporating rules engine technology within the registry/repository enables a significant degree of flexibility and automation, while reducing the reliance on humans to perform mechanical governance tasks (and the associated risk of error).
Lifecycle Management - The human interface to the registry/repository which incorporates the governance lifecycle processes and workflows.

Products

• Actional SOA Governance
• Infravio X-Registry(acquired by webMethods)
• SOA Software Workbench
• WebLayers Center (Policy Management and Enforcement)