Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

6.17. POLICY ENFORCEMENT MODELS: MANUAL, TECHNOLOGY-ASSISTED, AND AUTOMATED

Once you have determined the governance gaps to close and have derived policy categories from principles, you must begin to define the policy enforcement model (PEM) for your governance model. Remember, governance is for the critical aspects of your business. SOA governance is meant to focus on the critical aspects of your SOA initiative. The policies you must define and enforce are critical to SOA success and thus will be subject to enforcement.

The real gray area is in determining the overall governance and supporting policy model, deriving the necessary policy enforcement model, and then implementing or provisioning those policies to it for enforcement, whether manual, technology-assisted, or fully automated. Exhibit 6.7 depicts this challenge at a high level.

Figure 6.7. Policy Enforcement Scenarios

Once your governance and policy model are defined, you must then determine the policy enforcement model for those policies. Which policies are business and process policies that will be enforced manually, and which are more technical and thus can be automated via SOA tools and technologies? Once you have defined your SOA goals, principles, and policies, as well as the policy categories that help close key SOA governance gaps, you can begin to establish your SOA policy enforcement model. Enforcement of ...