Every enterprise that has been using IT as a business enabler is thinking of, discussing about or experimenting with Service Oriented Architecture. However, a key issue that has been identified in the SOA context is the governance of the Service Oriented Architectures.

Maptech has well – established concepts of governance in public and corporate life that can be applied for SOA governance. It also propose the use of Montesquieu’s power sharing formula that can help constitute the SOA governing bodies along the lines of Legislative, Executive and Judiciary branches in a government. In the end, we provide you the structure, roles, processes and tools that will together help set up an overarching model to attain the best SOA governance possible, enabling enterprises in realizing the promise of SOA -- agility, efficiency and adaptability.

SOA Governance – Immortality or Re-incarnation?
Every enterprise that has some relation to Information Technology (IT), be it as consumer or as provider, is thinking of, discussing about or experimenting with Service Oriented architecture (SOA).

“Service Oriented Architectures – An Enterprise View”,
SOA provides an enterprise to enhance business agility and flexibility that can be instrumental in its competitive edge that is essential to operate in the dynamic market place of today.

Maptech provides the concepts of governance in public and corporate life and leverage those (concepts) for SOA governance. Further we have tried to explore and apply the best practices that have evolved out of collective experiences of the human race in the field of governance in public life, to this evolving field of SOA Governance.

The governance, in whichever field we take, is about the way order is brought about in a system so as to accomplish a specific purpose. In this respect, the diagram here depicts the sphere of any governance model.

At the core of any model for governance lie the basic principles, which characterize the subjects of governance. The governance is manifested by creating organizational structures that follow defined, practiced and perfected processes and use resources and tools to perpetuate its own existence. These three together form the operational aspects of the governance model. The principles, affecting the behavioural aspects of subjects being governed, have a bearing on the interplay between the three branches of operational governance. Finally all these building blocks of governance collaborate to achieve a higher order purpose.

With the background of this model of governance, the study of cases of public or political governance, corporate governance and IT/SOA governance, reveal startling similarities. In public life, the subjects are people characterized by culture and the purpose is quality of life. In the corporate world the subjects are stakeholders having values while the purpose is business excellence. Finally, in IT governance, symbolized by SOA, the subjects are Business Driven IT characterized by services and the purpose is performance of business. The distinction however, ends here. The operational and behavioural aspects of the governance find quite a resonance among these distinct models.

We propose an approach for successful SOA governance for enterprises that are taking up serious Service Oriented Business Engineering initiatives. This journey to explore and disentangle the intricacies of SOA Governance using the age old wisdom of Governance will probably make us wonder if re-incarnation is truth or immortality is real, at least in context of principles of governance.