SOA Trends: The Current State of SOA Governance

According to an eBizQ survey, current SOA trends in governance reveal that the market for policy enforcement & management is still in its very early stage. But there is a potential for growth as companies are aware of their shortcomings.

SOA Trend: Manual Policy Enforcement Prevalent, but Worrisome

Findings from an eBizQ survey show that a majority of companies are manually enforcing their SOA security, compliance, and business policies. Fewer than 6% have automated SOA monitoring of policies; fewer than 5% automatically assess services for policy enforcement before entering them into a SOA repository; and only 14% use tools that automate SOA policy enforcement when those policies change.

However, organizations also indicate their concern about enforcing SOA policy rules in runtime (over 46%) and managing the effects of policy changes in design (40.5%) and runtime (41.5%). They are aware that their manual management practices are insufficient (40%) or uncertain of their sufficiency (43%).

SOA Trend: Companies Confident of Automated SOA Governance

Not surprisingly, those companies with automated governance methods expressed higher levels of confidence in their solutions than those with manual methods. Of those who feel their SOA policy management practices are sufficient, 33% have automated design-time governance and 26% have automated runtime enforcement solutions. In fact, the degree of automation in governance solutions is the biggest differentiator between those who are satisfied with their solution and those who aren't. Other measures as well confirmed that degree of automation, particularly runtime automation, is the greatest influencer on overall satisfaction with a governance solution.

Recommendation: Automate SOA Policy Management

SOA trends show that handling SOA policy management or governance manually is causing organizations some concern. This is not surprising. As SOAs grow and change, manual methods of defining—and, especially, of enforcing SOA rules and policies in the runtime environment—will fail to keep up, exposing companies to risk, from security gaps to failures in achieving regulatory compliance or meeting SLAs.

Based on survey results, organizations, especially as their SOAs grow, should adopt automated SOA design and runtime governance solutions to reap the SOA benefits of business agility.

Progress Actional SOA management solutions can play a critical role as part of a holistic governance strategy. Actional can supply visibility, security, and control of the activities of services and end-to-end business processes in the runtime environment. And Actional can be adopted incrementally, in concert with your overall SOA plan.

For More Information

For more SOA trends in governance and recommendations on SOA policy management, download: The Current State of SOA Governance: An ebizQ White Paper.