Don't gamble with IT governance
Too many companies gamble with their governance by treating it like Las Vegas, says ITBusinessEdge. As a result, what happens in IT stays in IT. And just like the folks at the roulette wheel, they end up losers.
Different styles of governance are required for three distinct categories of IT spend, namely: run the organisation, change the organisation and innovate. While business involvement is especially important in the latter two categories, it should be a part of governance even in 'run the organisation' mode, a Butler Group analyst said.
"Whether an organisation views IT as a strategic capability involving significant investment, or purely as a support service to be delivered at minimal cost, the reality is that all are dependent on information systems as an integral part of many business processes. Effective IT governance is therefore essential to ensure that the delivery of IT services meets the requirements of the business."
SOA difficulties compounded by inadequate governance
Between a third and half of the 950 companies surveyed by the Aberdeen Group in 2006 are having serious difficulties getting their SOA-enabled applications into stable deployment.
The report shows that the predominant reason for these difficulties is inexperience exacerbated by inadequate tools for the automated management and governance of the growing plethora and complexity of web services and applications under an SOA.
However, Best-in-Class organisations come out ahead in two key ways. Firstly these companies have invested in middleware along with SOA-specific operations and governance tools. Secondly, the organisations have aligned their operations and organisational structures to handle this new IT infrastructure paradigm. In using SOA management and governance tools, Best in Class organisations are achieving lower application lifecycle costs.
SOA design requires governance consideration
Governance must be a consideration early in the service oriented architecture (SOA) design process according to an article published on SearchWebServices.com.
In the article, guest writer Ronald Schmelzer says that SOA projects without governance can result in chaotic systems where no one knows exactly how services are being consumed or exposed within the organisation.
Accordingly, it advises businesses to implement a registry/repository and metadata management system as one of its first SOA activities. By having a place to collect and manage the metadata of the business, organisations can avoid simple systems becoming complex and unwieldy over time says Schmelzer.
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