SOA Platform Requirements

A Web services platform capable of SOA management and governance is critical to the continued profitable growth of a Web services-enabled network. The platform should be designed and developed specifically to address the particular challenges of managing the full Web services environment, from tactical projects through full-scale enterprise implementation.

To do the job, the Web services platform must manage and govern three primary types of network change in a shared-services environment that are behind the overall picture of rising costs: unexpected change to a service, planned change to a service and planned, simultaneous change to many services in the network.

As we've seen, several key capabilities are required to achieve this objective. The Web services platform must:

• Know when there is a service network problem – that the network of shared services is deviating from its normal operating range
• Identify the root cause of a problem – if it is a service network problem, then which application, service and operation is at the head of the cascading chain of trouble
• Insulate downstream applications and services from service changes and failures, or from an intentional change that would cause trouble if it were not isolated
• Understand and visualize the makeup of the extended service network – identify the complete set of the direct and indirect dependencies between systems
• Formulate a response to a problem or plan for non-disruptive intended change to a service or services – a set of rules that if followed in the service network, will eliminate or prevent failure conditions
• Distribute security policy, other policies, rules and behaviors into the network of shared services in a consistent and automated way

Summary

The success of an enterprise SOA initiative can be secured by the implementation of a SOA platform designed with governance in mind. The SOA platform must be able to address the three specific kinds of change which occur on services networks – and which are responsible for rising costs: unexpected change to a service, planned change to a service – and planned, simultaneous change to many services in the network.

For More Information

Understand the details of SOA platform governance requirements: read the free white paper, SOA Primer: Comprehensive Runtime Governance from Actional