The Open Group released last week two new industry standards: The Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM) and SOA Governance Framework.
OSIMM will provide an industry recognized maturity model for advancing the continuing adoption of SOA and Cloud Computing within and across businesses. The SOA Governance Framework is a free guide for organizations to apply proven governance standards that will accelerate service-oriented architecture success rates.
The Maturity Model is based on 7 maturity levels:
- Level 1: Silo
- Level 2: Integrated
- Level 3: Componentized
- Level 4: Service
- Level 5: Composite Services
- Level 6: Virtualized Services
- Level 7: Dynamically Re-Configurable Services
Which all are defined across 7 dimensions:
- Business
- Organization & Governance
- Method
- Application
- Architecture
- Information
- Infrastructure & Management
The standard comes with a series of questionnaires to help assess the current level of maturity of an organization. It also details the benefits of moving from one level to the next. For instance, when an organization moves from a Componentized to Services Maturity level it can expect:
The transformation from a Componentized maturity level to a Service maturity level causes the organization to be viewed more as a service provider to other organizations within the enterprise or external to the enterprise participating in the value chain. Business services now become re-usable. This maturity level reduces the need for (and hence the cost of) redeveloping the same functionality for multiple systems by the provision of re-useable services called through standardized interfaces, irrespective of the technology platform on which the application is running.
The SOA Governance Framework is:
A framework that provides context and definitions to enable organizations to understand and deploy SOA governance.
It defines:
- SOA Governance, including its relationship between Business, IT, and EA governance
- An SOA Governance Reference Model (SGRM)
- The SOA Governance Vitality Method (SGVM)
The definition of "governance" from the Open Group's perspective is:
governance means establishing and enforcing how people and solutions work together to achieve organizational objectives. This focus on putting controls in place distinguishes governance from day-to-day management activities
The SOA Governance Reference Model is supported by a number of elements:
- SOA governance guiding principles
- SOA governing processes
- Governed SOA processes
- SOA governance process artifacts
- SOA governance roles and responsibilities
- SOA governance technology
The SOA Governance Vitality Method is:
a process that utilizes the SOA Governance Reference Model (SGRM) as a baseline and then follows a number of phased activities to customize this baseline model to cater to the organization’s variants. SOA governance should be viewed as a process and not a project; therefore, the phases of the SGVM should be viewed as a continuous improvement loop, whereby progress is measured, and course-correction and updates to the SOA Governance Regimen and SOA Governance Roadmap are performed when needed.