Enterprise SOA

Who owns enterprise services? Who makes a decision about creating new services?

So far in this chapter, we have discussed only two models of governance: centralized and decentralized. A decentralized model ultimately works against standardization, and since enterprise services are built on standards to ensure interoperability, a decentralized model cannot be recommended. A centralized governance model is in some cases a good choice. In this scenario, all services are centrally owned, ensuring standardization. Everyone in the enterprise (with the proper roles and authorizations) can compose with those services freely, creating composite applications based on existing services. A decision-making process is needed only for the creation of new services. After all, a proposed new service might be more strategically created as an adaptation of an existing service, maximizing reuse instead of creating redundancy. No one will argue that new services must be subject to a decision-making process.

But there is another and perhaps better choice—a federal governance model that enables IT to do what it wants most and business units to do what they want most. A central authority exercises control of the underlying technology platform while business units create flexible, composite applications that take advantage of that platform. Dividing ownership of enterprise services by business unit is an alternative to centralized governance.

In fact, it now becomes possible to reorganize the business landscape ...