SOA Primer: Why Runtime Governance is Critcal for SOA

With SOA services now in production within many organizations, system architects are realizing that the most critical control/governance issue is in runtime. Data point after data point has demonstrated that many SOA implementations are just not working in production as designed or expected. Problems range from service interruptions to entire business processes failing, to compliance risks that generate costly delays and lengthy triage cycles. As these problems continue to pile up, runtime governance is now taking center stage for companies launching and utilizing SOAs. This whitepaper discusses how to get the runtime governance you need, now.

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Abstract: SOA Primer — Governance Issues

With all the interest in Web services and service oriented architectures (SOA) in recent years, the initial focus in IT organizations was in getting the services out the door as quickly as possible. This SOA primer discusses how, with the increasingly broad popularity and deployment of SOA in organizations and industries of many types, IT professionals are discovering the criticality of being able to take control of the Web services runtime environment – in addition to design, development, test and deployment phases.

Chasing the Promises of SOA

Interoperability and service reuse are among the major promises of service-oriented architecture (SOA). Yet interoperability and reuse can only be fully realized when everyone is working on the same page. Hence, not surprisingly, SOA has been a key driver in the increasing emphasis on, and interest in, governance in recent years. Leading the charge for governance has been enterprise architects who know quite well that for SOA systems to deliver value, there must be control in areas ranging from how a service is built and the process of deployment, to granular items such as schemas and WSDL creation.

Given the maturity of SOA technology and practices, it made sense that organizations implementing such systems focused primarily on these items, especially since most companies were still in the development and design phase. Today, however, with SOA services now in production within many organizations, system architects are realizing that the most critical control/governance issue is now runtime. Data point after data point has demonstrated that many SOA implementations are just not working in production as designed or expected. Problems range from service interruptions to entire business processes failing, to compliance risks that generate costly delays and lengthy triage cycles. As these problems continue to pile up, runtime governance is, not surprisingly, now taking center stage for companies launching and utilizing SOAs.

The Four Stages

Runtime governance can be divided into four primary stages: process, measurement, enforcement and feedback. Process comes first because if it is compromised, circumvented or not adhered to, there can be no effective control.

Process

While a great deal of process is employed on the pre-production side, realization of the actual governance kicks in as an application is migrated from development and into production. It is at this point that runtime governance can detect and report if services or consumers in production are adhering to governance guidelines. Experience indicates that violations can result not only from Web services problems such as “rogue” services that have somehow bypassed the development governance process, but also from services that have gone through the proper release process pursuant to the established governance guidelines, yet somehow result in violations when in production.

Measurement: Design and Development through Runtime

While significant work and planning occurs in design and development, what is critical to governance is what occurs in the runtime environment, and more to the point, knowing what is going on across the SOA during run time:

  • Are our compliance policies working properly?
  • Is customer Web services data encrypted?
  • Does the service have the right security polices in place?
  • Are the business rules being enforced?

Enforcement

End-to-end visibility and control over business processes are key to enforcing business and IT rules, reporting on them, and having the ability to do something about them in real time. Meaning that when governance guidelines are enforced, a runtime system can dynamically react to business opportunities or IT issues to directly impact the bottom line.

Feedback

Systematically tracking governance infractions and tracing their causes facilitates a lifecycle approach such that organizations are able to quickly fix and address breaches upstream. Runtime governance plays a crucial role as the last line of defense, and is designed to protect the company and the IT system. By carefully coordinating development governance (such as UDDI registry) and runtime governance, organizations can build a world-class governance initiative with each party doing its part at the proper time.

Read On

Find out more about SOA governance by watching a free webinar entitled: SOA Governance - Where the Rubber Meets the Runtime.

For More Information

Go beyond this SOA primer. Find out more about SOA governance: download the free webinar, SOA Governance: Where the Rubber Meets the Runtime