The meeting included a session that was open
to all conference delegates and that contained a review of the entire work program
of the Working Group.
In addition, there were sessions on
SOA Governance, the proposed SOA Maturity Model work item,
and SOA and the Virtual Enterprise,
and there was a joint meeting with the Security Forum on
Requirements for End Point Security and Architectures for De-Perimeterization.
Work Program Review
The Working Group has completed two projects:
- Definition of SOA
- Identification of the value that The Open Group
can add to SOA
It has four approved projects in progress:
- SOA Case Studies
- Ontologies for SOA
- SOA Governance
- SOA/TOGAF Practical Guide
There are three new projects currently being formed:
- SOA Reference Architecture
- SOA Maturity Model
- Business-Driven SOA
Definition of SOA
This project resulted in a simple definition
published on the SOA Working Group website.
Value that The Open Group can add to SOA
Ten
areas where The Open Group can add value were identified by
this project. Its recommendations are the basis of the current work program
of the Working Group.
SOA Case Studies
This project is collecting case studies that will
help both business and technical people to gain a better understanding of SOA.
Its work is ongoing and will continue. It was not discussed at the conference.
Ontologies for SOA
The aim is to develop a formal ontology for SOA,
to provide a basis for precise and clear explanations
of SOA, and potentially to contribute to model-driven SOA implementation.
The current draft ontology was presented at an open meeting
in the SOA Stream of the conference.
This broadly confirmed the results of the work so far,
and gave valuable feedback for its further progress.
SOA Governance
This project will:
- Develop a common definition of SOA Governance,
including distinguishing between overall IT Governance and SOA Governance
- Define re-usable processes and structures for SOA Governance
- Describe the relationship between IT to business governance;
and technical IT governance
- Define an SOA Governance Reference Model
It held a working meeting
during the conference (see below).
SOA/TOGAF Practical Guide
This had recently approved by the SOA Working Group and
the Architecture Forum as a joint project,
but had been doing productive work even before
it was formally approved.
It did not meet at the conference.
It is working through the phases of the
TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM) to assess
the impact of SOA.
It has completed a first pass through phases A and B, and
will next address phase C.
SOA Reference Architecture
The intention of this proposed project is to create
one or more non-vendor-specific reference architectures
that describe the various characteristics of a reference SOA environment
from an architectural perspective.
These architectures would be appropriate for use with
The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF).
Discussion in the SOA Stream of the conference
established that The Open Group is a highly appropriate body to
develop such an architecture, because it has an important constituency
of practicing enterprise architects.
SOA Maturity Model
An SOA Maturity Model will provide a common basis for business people
and information technology professionals
to assess existing SOA implementations
and plan the development of new SOA implementations.
At its meeting during the conference,
the main Board of The Open Group decided to establish a special
Committee of the Board to develop an SOA Maturity Model,
based on input material from IBM.
It is proposed to set up a project of the SOA Working Group
to provide review of and feedback on the maturity model
that this Committee develops.
Business-Driven SOA
There was no discussion of this project proposal at
the conference. Its purpose is to focus on the managed evolution
of business needs/potential and IT needs/potential, and
help capture common, cross-vendor understanding of
the business drivers behind SOA.
Its proponents are working to identify appropriate
project team members to do this work.
SOA Governance
The project team met to progress the
development of the project's White Paper, which will crystallize the project objectives and explain them to
prospective participants.
SOA Maturity Model
In a very constructive session, the Working Group
reviewed the Services Integration Maturity Model that had been
presented by IBM at previous conferences in the context of
maturity models that were presented by speakers from HP and EDS in the
SOA Stream of this conference.
There is much common ground between these models,
but significant added value in each of them.
The feedback from this session will provide
valuable input to the development of The Open Group
SOA Maturity Model.
SOA and the Virtual Enterprise
This session contained an interesting
discussion of the composition of services provided by
co-operating organizations with no single point of responsibility.
There are projects in academia that work on this basis.
Significant technical and legal issues must be resolved
before this way of working can be extended outside the academic environment,
but there are interesting possibilities for the future.
Requirements for End Point Security and Architectures for De-Perimeterization
This was a joint session of the SOA Working Group
with The Open Group Security Forum, based on issues raised by the
Jericho Forum.
Common ground was established: the
Jericho Forum wants to understand how SOA can support de-perimiterization,
and the SOA Working Group wants to understand security issues relating to SOA.
