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SOA Scorecard
by Prabhu Kapaleeswaran and
Robert Laird
Measuring the performance of any initiative is imperative for its success. "If you don't measure it, you won't improve it" is something that we've found to continually be true. In the past few years, the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has become an accepted architectural paradigm, but SOA metrics have not kept up. While, some organizations have had success utilizing SOA, this has typically been in spite of lack of SOA metrics, not because of it.
Organizations often struggle in translating technology value of an initiative into business value that the business organization can really understand. Though SOA is supposed to help in technology connecting with the business, there is very minimal prescriptive literature and framework that can guide us in terms of aligning the business and IT.
This article looks at utilizing a strategic performance management tool. A "Balanced Scorecard" is a concept that has been around for some time, used for measuring the overall impact of an initiative or department (for example, an "IT Balanced Scorecard"). Extending this concept to SOA makes sense and will be useful for measuring the performance of SOA. Instead of looking at which specific business initiatives SOA can support to drive the revenue numbers, this article looks at SOA itself as a business and should help you to initiate the creation of a Balanced Scorecard for SOA...
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Understanding SOA Governance
by Anne Thomas Manes
Effective governance is a critical element in fostering a successful SOA initiative. SOA promises to deliver a number of important business benefits, including faster time-to-market, lower costs, better consistency, and increased agility. But with great benefits come high risks. SOA requires fundamental changes to the planning, development, and operation of application systems, and it requires new levels of collaboration among project teams within the IT department and across lines of business. In fact, current IT practices, which typically focus on individual projects, time-to-market, and cost containment, frequently discourage SOA adoption.
SOA governance helps the organization succeed with SOA by mitigating these risks through established rules, processes, and decision-making authority. A SOA governance program helps people do things according to the organization's goals and best practices. An effective governance program empowers people to handle ambiguity, balance short- and long-range goals, and reduce conflict within the organization.
This following article provides an introduction to governance, explains how it works, and differentiates it from management. You will find this content useful if you have not been involved in establishing a governance program before or if you would like to gain another perspective on the mechanics of governance...
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Understanding Service Composition,
Part III: Dealing With Data
by John deVadoss
To their detriment many service-oriented architecture efforts tend to prioritize and focus on the technology connectivity (such as SOAP, HTTP, and WS-*), between and across services, over the business connectivity (such as, the task of exchanging and communicating business concepts and entities and their semantics). The ability to harmonize business entities and concepts across multiple services is critical to successful service composition.
How does this manifest itself? Let us once again consider the self-service application scenario; but this time, let us consider a customer scenario in a large bank. The customer service representatives require a single view of the customer in order to enable superior customer service, to enable better decision making and to enhance the relationship with the customer, both to retain existing customers as well as to acquire new ones. The challenge with building a service-oriented architecture to support these requirements is that often there is no single store of customer data in the bank; and, the customer data is fragmented across multiple legacy business systems.
In the real world there is often no single identifier for the customer data - the bank may have built some applications in-house, such as it may have acquired some other applications off-the-shelf and some services have been brought on-board as part of recent mergers with other smaller banks. Combining data to provide a single view of the customer is hard enough, but without a common identifier it is that much harder...
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Issue XLI, July 2010
Semantic Technologies in Integration and SOA
Fluid Services
Understanding Service Composition,
Part IV: Dealing with Events
Announcing the Spanish-Translated SOA Manifesto & Annotated SOA Manifesto
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Issue XL, June 2010
SOA Scorecard
Understanding SOA Governance
Understanding Service Composition,
Part III: Dealing With Data
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Issue XXXIX, May 2010
Leveraging the Next Generation SOA Ideals
for Service Oriented Enterprises (SOEs)
Understanding Service Composition,
Part II: Dealing With Identity
Effective Top-Down SOA Management
In An Efficient Bottom-Up Agile World
(Part 2)
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Issue XXXVIII, April 2010
Effective Top-down SOA Management in an
Efficient Bottom-up Agile World (Part 1)
Understanding Service Composition,
Part I: Dealing With Workflow Across Services
XML Appliances for Service-Oriented Architectures
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Issue XXXVII, March 2010
The Importance of Schema Design in SOA
Understanding Cloud Computing and Cloud-Based Security
SOA with Spring (Part 2)
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Issue XXXVI, February 2010
The Building Blocks of SOA
SOA with Spring (Part 1)
SOA Governance - How Best To Embrace it, Part 3: Governance Maturity, Tooling, Vitality and Success Patterns
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Issue XXXV, January 2010
Standards Supporting RESTful Services
SOA Governance - How Best To Embrace it, Part 2: Governance Lifecycle
Reporting on the 2nd International
SOA Symposium
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Issue XXXIV, Nov/Dec 2009
Reporting on the SOA Manifesto:
A Meeting of the Minds
Identity Services for SOA
Master Key for Unlocking Enterprise Data
Articulating SOA in the Cloud
The Annotated SOA Manifesto
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Issue XXXIII, October 2009
Preventing SOA Failures:
A Revealing Interview About Effective
SOA Governance
Enterprise SOA Governance
in a Product Organization
SOA Governance, How Best To Embrace It
Part I: Introduction to Enterprise, IT and
SOA Governance
A Case Study on SOA and Process:
Integrating E-Gov Travel Services with
Federal Agency Financial Systems (Part II)
Introducing the SOA Manifesto
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Issue XXXII, September 2009
A Case Study on SOA and Process:
Integrating E-Gov Travel Services with Federal Agency Financial Systems (Part I)
Dynamic SOA and BPM
Towards a DoD Service-Oriented
Architecture Competency Center:
Technology is the Least of Concerns
Consuming Services with WCF
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Issue XXXI, August 2009
Viral Data in SOA:
An Enterprise Pandemic
RESTful SOA with Open Source
Service Error Content Patterns (Part II)
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Issue XXX, July 2009
The Service Engine:
Structured Communication using Modern Service Technologies
Service Error Content Patterns (Part I)
An SOA Case Study: Integrating Adobe LiveCycle Forms using JBossWS
1st International Cloud Symposium
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Issue XXIX, May/June 2009
SOA and the XML Factor:
Designing Service-Oriented Solutions
with Extreme XML Compatibility
Principles for Implementing
a Service-Oriented Enterprise Architecture
Workflow-Enabled Services with
Windows Workflow Foundation
Towards an SOA Manifesto
2nd International SOA Symposium
Website Launch
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Issue XXVIII, April 2009
Building Reusable Services
What Drives SOA, Business or IT?
A Content Management Migration Framework for SCA
SOA Pattern of the Week Series
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Issue XXVII, March 2009
SOA in Healthcare (Part II)
Understanding WS-Policy Part II:
Operator Composition Rules and Attachments
A Look at WSDL 2.0
SOA Design Patterns Webcast
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Issue XXVI, February 2009
Service Development Lifecycle Controls
for Creating a Service Factory
The Rise of Virtual Service Grids
Service Transaction Handling
Without WS-AtomicTransaction
Understanding WS-Policy Part I:
Policy Structure and Composite Policies
Introducing 20 New SOA Podcasts
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Issue XXV, January 2009
What Every Developer Should Know About SOA Governance
Principles and Patterns at the U.S. Department of Defense
Scaling Services with Software Pipelines: A Look at Service Design with the SPOC Methodology
Web Service Contract Versioning Fundamentals Part II: Version Identifiers and Versioning Strategies
Introducing the SOA Pattern of the Week Series
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Issue XXIV, December 2008
The Case for Single-Purpose Services: Understanding the Non-Agnostic Context and a Strategy for Implementation
Message Auditing in Service-Oriented Architecture
REST-Inspired SOA Design Patterns
SOAPatterns.org - A Community Site
Dedicated to SOA Patterns
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Issue XXIII, Oct/Nov 2008
Optimizing the Enterprise for SOA: From Project Management to Program Management to the "Network Organization"
Ten Strategies for Overcoming the Technological Impact of SOA Governance
Defining Business Services in the Telecommunications Industry
Business Process Analysis with SOA: A Case Study
Web Service Contract Versioning Fundamentals Part I: Versioning and Compatibility
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Issue XXII, September 2008
Demystifying Data Federation for SOA
The Economics of Service-Orientation: Leveraging the Emerging Services Marketplace
Service-Orientation and Systems of Record: The Northwest Customer Support Example
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Issue XXI, August 2008
Enterprise Mashups Part II: Why SOA Architects Should Care
Project-Oriented SOA
SOA Security 101: Patching the Firewall Hole
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Issue XX, July 2008
Service-Orientation vs. Object-Orientation: Understanding the Impedance Mismatch
Data Management: The Missing Link in Your SOA Strategy
An SOA Vendor Evaluation Methodology
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Issue XIX, June 2008
SOA in the DoD
The Benefits of a Data Abstraction Layer for SOA
SOA Engineering Focal Points
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Issue XVIII, May 2008
Enterprise Mashups
Part I: Bringing SOA to the People
Shadow IT: Edge
Applications in a Service-Oriented Enterprise
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Issue XVII, April 2008
Relating Master Data Management to SOA
SOA in Healthcare (Part I)
A Program Management Methodology for SOA
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Issue XVI, March 2008
Working with SOA and RUP
SOA Engineering Misconceptions
Refactoring Considerations for Service-Enabling Applications
Service-Orientation and Object-Orientation Part II: A Comparison of Design Principles
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Issue XV, February 2008
SOA in Government: A Law Enforcement Use Case
Security in SOA - It's the Car, Not the Garage
Integration with Process-Centric Service Composition
Service-Orientation and Object-Orientation Part I: A Comparison of Goals and Concepts
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Issue XIV, January 2008
Next-Generation Grid-Enabled SOA: Not Your MOM's Bus
A Strategic Approach to SOA: Using Pilot Projects and Effective Disciplines to Ensure Successful Adoption and Governance
Defining Operational Services: How SOA Can Help Realize a Role-Based Organization
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Issue XIII, December 2007
Ten Ways to Identify Services
Services as Web Services: Are We There Yet? How Web Service Technology Stacks Alone Cannot Fulfill the Goals of SOA
SOA Design Patterns: The International Community Review of SOA Patterns and Pattern Languages
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Issue XII, November 2007
SOA Pioneers Interview Series: Intel Chief Architect Steve Birkel on SOA Practices and Intel's SOA Adoption
Smart Enough for SOA: Incorporating Enterprise Decision Management into Service Design
Processes as Services: Contract Design for Services that Encapsulate WS-BPEL Process Definitions
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Issue XI, October 2007
Checking up on the Standards: Introducing the Big SOA Grid
Beyond IT: Exploring the Business Value of SOA
Software Pipelines Theory: Understanding and Applying Concurrent Processing
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Issue X, September 2007
SOA - Ready for Primetime: The Next-Generation, Grid-Enabled Service-Oriented Architecture
SOA Realization through Service Virtualization
SOA and the Importance
of XQuery
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Issue IX, Jul/Aug 2007
The Content Assembly Mechanism (CAM) and SOA Data Service Layers
SaaS, Composite Applications, and SOA: Understanding their Differences and Making Them Work Together
The Convergence of Service-Orientation and Business Strategy
SOA Methodology: Mainstream Methodology for Service-Oriented Analysis and Design
SOA Glossary: Definitions for SOA and Service-Orientation
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Issue VIII, June 2007
Defining Business Services: SOA from a Corporate Perspective
Watch Your SOA Blind Spots: A Checklist for Testing Web Services
Software Pipelines in the Real World: Two SOA Performance Case Studies
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Issue VII, May 2007
Finding Services in the Mainframe
Quality Assurance for SOA Through Process Cadence
SOA Principles: An Introduction to the Service-Orientation Paradigm
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Issue VI, April 2007
Modernizing the Mainframe for SOA: Considerations for Transforming Mainframe Assets into Services
SOA and Composite Applications
Automated Modeling and Performance Management for Service-Oriented Solutions
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Issue V, March 2007
High Performance SOA with Software Pipelines
Essential Components of an SOA Quality Foundation
SOA and the Core Competency Model: A Business Perspective for Realizing Competitive Advantages
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Issue IV, February 2007
Service Elicitation:
Defining the Conceptual Service
SOA and EDA: Using
Events to Bridge Decoupled Service Boundaries
SOA and the Emergence
of Business Technology
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Issue III, January 2007
AJAX: Bringing SOA
to the Front Lines
Commercializing Services: Web Services Distribution Channels and SOA
Implications of SOA on Business Strategy and Organizational Design
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Issue II, Nov/Dec 2006
An SOA Case Study:
Agility in Practice
Business Rules in SOA:
Decision Services and the Centralization of Rules Management
Web Service-Enabling Relational Databases
for SOA
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Issue I, Sep/Oct 2006
SOA in the Enterprise:
A Survey of the Technical Landscape
SOA Infrastructure:
Mediation and Orchestration
An SOA Practices Checklist
for Building Implementation Roadmaps
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