SOA Governance with IBM Rational Asset Manager

Govern service assets at development time using IBM Rational softwareWhite paperAugust 2007
SOA governance with IBM Rational
Asset Manager software.
Steve Weaver, architecture management marketing engineer, IBM RationalSOA governance with IBM Rational Asset Manager software.Page 
IntroductionContents The success of service-oriented architecture (SOA) in terms of software development and delivery is dependent on a strong governance environment 2 Introduction supporting the effort to develop and deploy services and service-based appli-2 Defining SOA governance cations and frameworks.4 SOA governance and IBM7 Overview of IBM Rational Asset Developing an end-to-end governance approach involves creating a decision-Manager software making structure from executives such as the chief information officer (CIO) 12 Rational Asset Manager down to the individual business areas and IT organizations. In addition, SOA software and SOA governance governance controls the end-to-end service lifecycle both during the develop-32 Conclusion ment process and at run time.
SOA governance is about setting up the policies, procedures and processes that are needed to allow for efficient and effective decision making throughout a business and IT organization. Once the governance process has been estab-lished, it is executed through the management of the SOA service lifecycle.
This paper discusses some of the challenges around SOA governance in the ®context of a lifecycle of services, and introduces IBM Rational Asset Manager software as a solution to those challenges, illustrating the principles of IBM's development-time metadata management strategy in the context of SOA governance.
Defining SOA governanceTo better understand how SOA governance fits within the context of overall corporate governance, it is first necessary to define what we mean by gover-nance in general, and by IT governance and SOA governance in particular.SOA governance with IBM Rational Asset Manager software.Page 
GovernanceThere are two fundamental characteristics of governance. The first charac-teristic involves the processes established by a business to determine who is empowered to make certain decisions. The second characteristic includes the mechanisms and policies that are used by the business to measure and control the way those decisions are implemented. The first characteristic can be thought of as the process by which the development and delivery of services are to be managed, and the second can be thought of as the implementation of that process using tools.
Governance is usually viewed as an executive function, while the execution of the governance framework is the responsibility of project managers and, ultimately, the analysts, architects, developers and testers who implement the policies. In this paper, we will discuss the governance of SOAs, which can be thought of as an extension of IT governance. First, let's define both IT and SOA governance.
IT governanceIT governance aligns IT activities with the goals of the business as a whole. This subset of governance includes the decision-making rights associated with IT investment, as well as the policies, practices and processes used to measure and control the way IT decisions are prioritized and executed. IBM Rational software provides key tools to help automate the process of IT governance.
SOA governanceAdoption of an SOA raises new issues both in IT decision rights and in mea-surement and control. IT organizations must consider which operation is best suited to deploy different services under varying conditions, and they must be SOA governance with IBM Rational Asset Manager software.Page 
able to monitor that the services are in fact enhancing business value. SOA governance is an extension of IT governance that focuses on the lifecycle of services and composite applications in an organization's SOA. Deploying an SOA frequently serves as a catalyst for an organization to start thinking about improved corporate and IT governance, and how to best implement SOA gov-ernance practices. In this paper, we will discuss the implementation of service lifecycle management through Rational Asset Manager software.
SOA governance and IBMIn March 2006, IBM announced a view of SOA governance that included exten-sions of IT governance focused on the lifecycle of services to help ensure the business value of SOA, establish d... [download for more]