The Open Group announced the availability of two new industry standards on Monday: the Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM) and SOA Governance Framework. OSIMM will provide an industry recognized maturity model for advancing the continuing adoption of SOA and Cloud computing within and across businesses. The SOA Governance Framework is a free guide for organizations to apply proven governance standards that will accelerate service-oriented architecture (SOA) success rates.
“These are two very different standards that are both important for the deployment of SOA within large organizations,” said Chris Harding, forum director for SOA and semantic interoperability at The Open Group. “Enterprises use OSIMM when considering adopting SOA, to help them determine what level of SOA is appropriate to their needs and capabilities. They use the SOA Governance Framework once they have adopted SOA, to help them determine how to organize themselves to use it to their best advantage. Together, the standards enable enterprises to accelerate SOA deployment and generate direct business value much sooner.”
OSIMM
As more organizations embrace services as the foundation for their next-gen IT infrastructures, it is increasingly important to assess maturity within a complete SOA migration path and identify how to maximize business benefits from their adoptions. Many SOA maturity models exist today, however, an industry-recognized adoption model and terminology based on open standards are both required for companies to realize the full potential of SOA.
OSIMM leverages proven best practices within the industry, helping IT practitioners create a roadmap for their incremental adoption of SOA and Cloud computing. Additionally, the model will help organizations achieve advanced levels of service integration that are specifically in line with their unique migration path and business goals.
“IBM is very pleased with today’s announcement of the Open Service Integration Maturity Model standard which provides our customers with the ability to identify business goals and assess associated usage of services when creating SOA solutions, said Kerrie Holley, IBM fellow and worldwide CTO of the SOA Center of Excellence in Global Business Services.
“OSIMM sets the foundation for an iterative, roadmap-based approach to deploying services aligned with organizational objectives. With standardization, customers are assured they can use these powerful concepts across diverse heterogeneous environments. IBM strongly supports OSIMM and its use in helping our customers as they execute on their services roadmap.”
The first version of the OSIMM technical standard is available for download here: .
SOA Governance Framework
Industry adoption of SOA validates the importance of good governance practices in assuring that organizations reach and surpass their intended goals. The SOA Governance Framework was developed by The Open Group SOA Work Group to ensure enterprises can benefit from proven best practices without having to invest in developing a framework of their own, thereby reducing the overall risk associated with SOA. Unlike other governance frameworks that are focused on IT rather than enterprise architecture or SOA, such as ValIT and COBIT (from ISACA), and ITIL, the new framework provides specific guidance for governance of SOA.
“Organizations can reduce cost, minimize risk and accelerate the deployment of governance programs by applying the proven standards and best practices outlined in the SOA Governance Framework,” said Rajesh Radhakrishnan, VP of Applications Services at EDS, an HP company. “As one of the key contributors to the SOA Governance Framework, we continue to collaborate with The Open Group to develop SOA standards that promote the adoption of leading-edge technologies and methods.”
The SOA Governance Framework is available immediately, free of charge from The Open Group at http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/catalog/c093.htm.
The Open Group is a vendor-neutral and technology-neutral consortium, which drives the creation of “Boundaryless Information Flow” that will enable access to integrated information within and between enterprises based on open standards and global interoperability. The Open Group works with customers, suppliers, consortia and other standard bodies. Its role is to capture, understand and address current and emerging requirements, establish policies and share best practices; to facilitate interoperability, develop consensus, and evolve and integrate specifications and open source technologies; to offer a comprehensive set of services to enhance the operational efficiency of consortia; and to operate the industry’s premier certification service.