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:

SOA Portfolio Governance

Portfolio Governance deals with the analysis and identification of potential services (and consumers)

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

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

Technologies that support SOA Governance typically fall into four functional categories: Policy Creation, Policy Management, Policy Enforcement, and Policy Storage.

Policy Creation technologies function as the point where various types of policy are defined and captured. Typically, design-time policy is created in a GUI to a registry / repository. Typically, run-time policy is created in a GUI to a intermediary.

Policy Management technologies function as the point where various types of policy are viewed and updated, if necessary. Typically, policy creation is done in a user interface to an intermediary or registry and repository.

Policy Enforcement technologies function as the point where various types of policy are actualized or executed. Typically, policy enforcement is done with a service or integration intermediary (broker, agent, appliance, or gateway technology).

Policy Storage technologies function as the point where various types of policy are warehoused or kept. Typically policy is stored within a repository.

Most technologies do well in one particular area and support other policy areas minimally, if at all. A new breed of technologies is emerging that support each of these Policy functions well. These tools are often referred to as "Governance Tools". These "Governance Tools" focus on managing the Policy Lifecycle. Consequently, Policy Lifecycle is sometimes used interchangeably with Governance Lifecycle.

Products supporting SOA governance

• Actional SOA Governance (acquired by Progress Software)
• AmberPoint SOA Management System
• BEA AquaLogic
• IBM Software Group Products, Rational Brand covering SOA portfolio management, SOA asset management, Services creation and deployment and Services verification and validation. Test.
• Infravio X-Registry (acquired by webMethods)
• Oracle SOA Suite
• SOA Software Workbench (Governance, Life-cyle and Workflow Management)
• Software AG/Fujitsu CentraSite
• WebLayers Center (Policy Management and Enforcement)