Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Managing Web services and SOA applications

Network World

Network/Systems Management




Network World's Network/Systems Management Newsletter, 10/31/07

Managing Web services and SOA applications

By Denise Dubie

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives promise to cause management challenges for IT managers looking to ensure application performance and exceptional IT service delivery.

Network World recently devoted a New Data Center issue to the topic of SOA in the enterprise and offered articles on putting SOA best practices in place as well as managing the loosely-coupled applications across distributed environments. And I trolled the vendor landscape to find 10 tools to address SOA governance, quality and management.

And Network World isn't the only industry watcher with SOA management on its radar. Separately, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst Randy Heffner recently put out a series of reports on stand-alone tools to manage SOA and Web services. Forrester looked at products during July and August of this year and interviewed vendor and user companies to determine what tools are available today. Vendors included Amber Point, BEA Systems, CA, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Progress Software, SAP and more. The research firm also defines what it sees as SOA and Web services management, something the analyst group considers critical for any SOA implementation.

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Forrester defines it as such: "Software infrastructure to ensure that the production operation of SOA-based services delivers on QoS expectations for technical performance and availability and, optionally, on QoS for security, business operations, and general policy compliance"

Heffner also spells out facts about SOA that will require enterprise IT managers to plan for "robust SOA management."

To start, Heffner clarifies that SOA management involves more than just Web services. "For reasons of performance, reliability, or maturity, many firms find it necessary to deliver SOA-based services using both Web services and other protocols such as Java Message Service, native .Net protocols, and Java RMI," the report reads. "With today's levels of Web services maturity, Web services can't meet all SOA demands."

Second, SOA management requires more than monitoring response times and traffic flows. "It must also have a view into application components, process flows involving multiple services, database calls, and multiple types of SOA infrastructure such as application servers, enterprise services buses (ESB), and SOA appliances, to name a few such extended visibility points" Heffner writes.

And managing SOA also requires visibility into business operations. "Viewing the flow of requests into and responses from your strategic business services amounts to direct, real-time visibility into meaningful, measurable units of business activity," according to Forrester. "Business users may have a keen and direct interest in any of these streams of business activity."

For much more on Forrester's SOA and Web services management report and the vendors it evaluated, click here.

Editor's note: Starting the week of Nov. 12, you will notice a number of enhancements to Network World newsletters that will provide you with more resources and more news links relevant to the newsletter's subject. The Network/Systems Management newsletter written by Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie will be merged with the Network/Systems News Alert and will be named the Network/Systems Alert. You'll get Denise's analysis of the network/systems management market, which you will be able to read in full at NetworkWorld.com, plus links to the day's network/systems management news and other relevant resources. This Alert will be mailed on Mondays and Wednesdays. We hope you will enjoy the enhancements and we thank you for reading Network World newsletters.


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Contact the author:

Senior Editor Denise Dubie covers the technologies, products and services that address network, systems, application and IT service management for Network World. E-mail Denise.



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