June 05, 2009, 8:31 PM — The treatment of SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) as a special case confined to elite architects and developers duplicates costs for IT companies, new research data from consulting firm Ovum reveals.
The report, entitled ALM (application lifecycle management) and SOA: Lifecycles in a Parallel Universe, posits that the push to apply governance to the SOA lifecycle creates a separate domain of governance apart from the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
"Full blown SOA governance often recreates duplication that SOA architecture was supposed to eliminate," said Tony Baer, senior analyst, Ovum. "The disconnect of SOA from the mainstream of the software development lifecycle has contributed to the backlash that it has suffered over the past 12 -- 18 months."
The SDLC, the report said, can benefit from SOA governance practices, which could improve application lifecycle management. "Examples include architected development that design services for potential reuse, or utilization of service contracts that provide explicit awareness of service performance at runtime," it said.
However, Baer noted, adjustments have to be made to SDLC practices to fully benefit from SOA lifecycle governance. "Middle ground approaches that apply principles of agile development to enterprise architectural practices are the solution," he explained.
