The Open Group today announced two new frameworks to assist organizations in the adoption of a service-oriented architecture, or SOA, an SOA Governance Framework to help companies develop SOA strategies, and the Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM) to help companies evaluate those strategies.
The frameworks were led by executives from the companies that are platinum supporters of The Open Group: Capgemini, HSBC, HP, IBM, NEC, SAP, and Sun Microsystems.
The Open Group told InternetNews.com that the frameworks do not compete with standards such as CoBIT and ITIL. “We expect that many companies will use our SOA framework within an overall context of CoBIT or ITIL,” The Open Group said.
“CoBIT provides good practice that can be leveraged to ensure that the deliverable (in this case, for the SOA environment) will indeed meet and exceed business outcomes,” Robert Stroud, international vice president of ISACA, the group responsible for CoBIT, told InternetNews.com.
Frameworks help parts of a business work together, Stroud added. “Name a business process that doesn’t require technology,” he said.
The challenges involved in implementing frameworks can seem daunting. “We’re fighting the myth that governance is … intrusive,” said Stroud.
“Governance is a matter for the whole team, not just one individual,” said The Open Group.
Everyone has to work together. “One of the first steps for governance, we advise, is finding the stakeholders in the business and setting governance principles. This will identify the places of value for the business first. Getting everyone talking and agreed is a good first step. This should all be done in the context of a good understanding of why and how the organization wants to use SOA,” said The Open Group.
