According to a recent study by the Butler Group, a lack of proper governance will negate any proposed service oriented architecture (SOA) benefits.
The report, called SOA Governance, explains that while IT is necessary to SOA, organisations need to focus on putting the right people in the right roles, and making sure they have the required authority to keep the architecture consistent.
"Most organisations deploying SOA leave it too late to implement effective governance." says Rob Hailstone, software infrastructure practice director at Butler Group. "The longer you leave it, the more difficult it becomes to retrofit governance to an operational SOA environment. However, the effort must be made if the SOA initiative is not to descend into chaos."
The report deals with the four major phases of SOA deployment: planning, design and development, run-time and change lifecycle. It also explains that many definitions of SOA focus only on the technology-centric run-time phase, whereas this is only one aspect of the entire process.
Butler Group outlines one of the issues that many companies neglect is that all resources in a SOA must be shared and anything abstract must be changed. Also mentioned is how an SOA cannot be IT-driven unless the company is willing to be adaptable.
According to Butler, the long-term benefits of SOA can only be realised if a company is willing to invest in an SOA governance initiative.
Share