| Backgrounder: |
The operational life cycle state of a Service is well supported by specialist Service Management tools and by more traditional Systems Management vendors. However, whilst the runtime provider/consumer relationship and Service Level Agreement (SLA) are of prime importance, Services do not just exist in the operational state.
Services should be considered as first order assets throughout the life cycle for a number of reasons.
Assigning organizational responsibility and funding require Services to be recognized as a planning artefact.
Architectural policy and patterns such as Service layering that enable flexibility and sharing for both business and IT reasons must be defined in the Service Architecture.
The service is a key bridging mechanism between the business process and IT application support. Services therefore provide traceability and governance over business requirements from concept to operational state.
The Service Specification provides precise requirements for Service Provisioning, Certification and Testing as well as supporting publication and discovery of the operational Service.
Even with the most flexible design, Services will still need to be upgraded, replaced and gracefully retired.
There is now increased pressure on both business and IT to demonstrate appropriate governance. To ensure that SOA goals such as flexibility and sharing are met, organizational roles and responsibilities are followed, that funding is used appropriately, and that all possible provisioning options are considered, requires the setting of appropriate policies and then managing the life cycle of a Service according to those policies.
There is also a need to manage the integrity of the Services Architecture – ensuring that dependencies and relationships between Services defined in the architecture are not compromised and that ongoing adaptability is maintained. This governance task spans the entire life cycle.
To support these requirements, SOA vendors have recently been enhancing their governance and management capabilities, some through acquisition, in order to strengthen their support for Service Registries and Repositories. |
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