SOA Governance Technical Standard : Introduction by the Open Group

This document describes a framework that provides context and definitions to enable organizations to understand and deploy SOA governance.

This document defines:

• SOA Governance, including its relationship between Business, IT, and EA governance; this assists organizations in understanding the impact that the introduction of SOA into an organization has on governance
• An SOA Governance Reference Model (SGRM) and its constituent parts, which assists organizations in specifying their appropriate governance regimes; and capturing best practice as a basis for a common approach
• The SOA Governance Vitality Method (SGVM) which assists organizations in customizing the SGRM and realizing their SOA Governance Regimen

This document is not intended to be used as provided; it is intended to be customized to create appropriate SOA governance for the organization. Many of the lists are non-normative and exemplary and intended to be filtered and as input to the customization process.

This document does not include an explanation of the fundamentals and value of SOA which is important for being able to understand and apply SOA governance. Many other specifications and books, some of which are referenced, are available on SOA basics.

Overview

Many companies have adopted Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to architecture to assist in closing the business and IT gap by delivering the appropriate business functionality in a timely and efficient manner. For more details on this, refer to available books and standards on SOA (see Referenced Documents).

Many companies that have approached SOA via a pilot project have not been seeing the same demonstrated SOA benefits once they have deployed a fully-fledged SOA project. While pilot projects achieved a level of re-use, they have tended to be within one division, but as soon as a project boundary crosses multiple divisions, new challenges are encountered.

One of the key disciplines to assist in addressing these challenges is governance. Whilst governance has been around a long time, SOA has heightened the need and importance of having a formal SOA Governance Regimen that sets expectations and eases the transition of an organization to SOA by providing a means to reduce risk, maintain business alignment, and show business value of SOA investments through a combination of people, process, and technology. The role of the SOA Governance Regimen is to create a consistent approach across processes, standards, policies, and guidelines while putting compliance mechanisms in place. Get the complete paper here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

BlogTwitterLinkedInFacebookWiki