The IBM Rational® service-oriented architecture (SOA) solution provides consulting services, an SOA governance model, and service lifecycle management infrastructure and tools that, together, can help you realize the full potential of your SOA investments.
A major challenge in adopting an SOA is that many groups, both internal and external to the organization, contribute to the execution of strategic business processes. With an SOA, once-siloed data is now exposed as services and shared across departments, lines of business and even companies—raising concerns about decision rights and process measurement and control. Who makes a decision on whether a service can be accessible to other applications? Who should fund the shared service? Who owns it? How is it implemented? How do you determine whether it achieves expected results? Who’s responsible for fixing it if it breaks?
The Rational SOA solution enables you to answer these questions with a holistic approach to SOA adoption that addresses both governance and management issues. A proven SOA governance model guides you through the process of setting up the policies, procedures and processes required for efficient and effective decision making throughout the business and IT organization. Once established, the execution of the governance process is realized through a service lifecycle management infrastructure, which defines the end-to-end process of how services will be developed and managed throughout the enterprise.
By reducing the inherent risks of SOA with well-governed service lifecycle management, organizations are better able to motivate all areas of the business to reuse enterprise assets and shared services. After all, a department will be much more willing to share once-private application assets if it knows these assets will be protected. And, conversely, a department will be more likely to use (or reuse) a service or process from another group if the asset’s integrity, security, reliability and performance can be assured.
As a result of accelerating SOA adoption, the organization can realize the benefits of SOA more quickly, including increased process flexibility, improved responsiveness and reduced software and systems delivery costs.
| What is your role? | Typical challenges |
| CEO, line-of-business manager, CIO, CTO, VP of development, business analyst |
Who decides what shared services are needed and in which areas of the business they should be deployed?
How will SOA development and maintenance of shared services be funded?
How do we ensure that SOA projects remain aligned with business goals and deliver the expected business results?
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| Senior software development manager, development manager, project manager, operations manager |
How do I enforce established SOA governance policies and procedures throughout the service delivery lifecycle?
How do I maintain and secure services assets while encouraging reuse?
What impact will the reuse of business services have on my ability to meet service level agreements (SLAs)?
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| Software architect, developer, build engineer, tester |
How can I improve my ability to deliver high-quality services and composite applications quickly and efficiently?
How do I make sure that the applications I create and assemble do what the business wants them to do?
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