Good governance of a service-oriented architecture is becoming a core competency. This Magic Quadrant report by Gartner examines the market for SOA governance through a set of integrated technologies. It evaluates leaders, challengers and innovators in the SOA governance technology market, providing feature information and strengths and cautions for each.
Magic Quadrant for Integrated SOA Governance
Technology Sets, 2007Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00153858, L. Frank Kenney, Daryl C. Plummer, 31 December 2007
Good governance of a service-oriented architecture is becominga core competency. We examine the market for SOA governancethrough a set of integrated technologies.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOWNo vendor yet offers a best-in-class service-oriented architecture (SOA) governancetechnology set. Best of breed is preferable to best of brand, when technologies coming fromdifferent vendors are reasonably well-integrated.
MAGIC QUADRANTMarket OverviewIntegrating SOA governance between disparate domains remains complex, and althoughobtaining SOA governance technologies from your installed middleware vendor may be lessexpensive than from a third-party vendor (in many cases, new technology licenses can becombined with existing ones), ensuring that the technology supports heterogeneousenvironments is essential. Interoperability can sometimes be difficult, and SOA governancestandards and specifications are immature or nonexistent. Ensuring that your vendorparticipates in some governance interoperability specification can help ease deployments,especially in best-of-breed situations where appropriateness can no longer be ignored. A fullset of SOA governance technologies has been identified and is now making its way into thehands of knowledgeable SOA proponents.
Market Definition/DescriptionThe market for SOA governance is a varied one, with many different types of productsproviding support for governing the behavior of an SOA. In short, SOA governance is aboutensuring and validating that assets and artifacts within the architecture are operating asexpected and maintaining a certain level of quality. This Magic Quadrant reduces the marketto one set of technologies with strong architectural cohesion (integration) promoting ease ofuse and interoperability of products. This integration includes the idea that multiple personaswill be involved in governing an SOA. Each of these personas will bring a different perspectiveto the process of performing different kinds of tasks. However, all of these tasks must be partof a single governance effort instead of a different, but related, effort. 2 We avoid use of the term "governance suite" Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Integrated SOA Governancebecause it is not representative of the product sets Technology Sets, 2007sold today. The majority of SOA governance ytechnologies are not integrated into a single suite butare provided from very different technology code challengers leadersbases. Policy management and enforcement enginesseldom share the same integrated code base asregistries and repositories. In addition, many of thefeatures of SOA governance are being built into otherSOA infrastructure offerings (for example, TibcoSoftware, IBM, BEA Systems and Oracle) and, assuch, do not constitute an independent suite inpackaging or product stock-keeping unit. However,the need to provide a set of governance functions in IBM HPan integrated fashion, no matter what the original Software AGsource of the technology feature, is important. Microsoft Progress Software AmberPointLikewise, these technologies are not a platform but SOA SoftwareBEA Systemsare, rather, part of a larger set of integrated CA SAPFujitsu TIoibncao Softwarecomposition technologies designed for creating and Sun WebLayersdeploying an SOA. Layer 7 TechnologiesLogicLibraryVordelInclusion and Exclusion CriteriaWe have included vendors that explicitly sell into theSOA governance technology market. This means thatwe included only companies with products, sales,marketing and services specifically targeted atproviding SOA governance.
We currently do not include SOA and service-testing niche players visionariescompanies in the Magic Quadrant, even though SOAtesting is a closely related market to SOA completeness of visiongovernance technologies. However, SOA testingcapability enhances the ability of a governance As of 4Q07Source: Gartner (December 2007)technology set. It is our belief that SOA testing andvalidation will be a key area to watch for emerginggovernance offerings as companies like HP, iTKO,Mindreef, Parasoft and Solstice grow their presence in SOAgovernance-related initiatives. In addition, Oracle didn't qualify for Evaluation Criteriathis Magic Quadrant because it only markets and sells governance Ability to Executetechnologies to users with Or... [download for more]
