Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

1.1. THE INEVITABLE SOA TREND

SOA is one of the most important trends in Information Technology today. SOA is now a top priority in most organizations. SOA is receiving all this attention because of the great potential value it offers to those who pursue it. If an organization achieves a mere fraction of the total potential value of SOA, it will be significant to that organization's bottom line, competitive posture, and overall operational effectiveness. That is why SOA is such an important strategic initiative to pursue. SOA makes too much sense technically and financially not to implement.

I like to define SOA as a combination of a Business Model, an IT strategy, an architectural approach, and an implementation pattern, all predicated on the concept of "Services."

In the SOA business model sense, an organization is essentially an economic engine assembled from a combination of internal and external processes and capabilities, all of which in combination enable the end-to-end execution of business processes that achieve the organization's objectives. A for-profit corporation is created to make money for its shareholders. Thus, maximum profits are achieved by optimizing execution of business transactions. If an organization can accomplish business transactions more efficiently and at a lower cost by performing them internally, it will do so. If, however, overall efficiency and cost optimization is achieved by others outside of the organization performing those transactions, the ...