What does Networking have to do with Governance?
Not All Full Suite Vendors have SOA Network Solutions
Many full suite SOA Vendors have completely ignored the need for networking capabilities and associated SOA Network Appliances/Gateways. SUN, Oracle, SOA Software, Progress Software, webMethods, and many other "full SOA suite" vendors provide a complete SOA Platforms which typically includes some kind of SOA Governance Solution without any real SOA Networking products. On the other hand we see IBM purchased Datapower over a year ago and was the first full suite vendor to move into SOA Networking. And more recently we have seen SAP partner with Cisco to provide network infrastructure based on SONA. So why do some Vendors have SOA Networking Products while other don’t?
Can you implement SOA Governance without SOA Appliances?
Of course many installations have been implemented without the need to have SOA Appliances. When implementing SOA with the
It is more a Question of
Understanding the adoption of SOA within and between Enterprises will help us understand the priorities of full suite vendors. At this point if you are implementing an
What is the Real Value-Add for SOA Networking?
While the value-add of SOA Networking is still up for debate, the move by Cisco [with partnership with SAP] in this direction indicates that there is reasons to have SOA Network Appliances/Gateways. This move is likely to legitimize the market for other SOA Networking Vendors. The value-add of these devices are:
1) Security Appliances – while it can be debated whether the appropriate place to solve SOA Security is within hardware vs. software; the real answer is probably a combination of hardware and software solutions. Therefore at some point you may want to consider the need for SOA Appliances. Security in my mind is not an option and is a baseline requirement which makes it mandatory if you are moving services beyond the
2) Policy Decision/Enforcement Points – In distributed networks, SOAP messages can be intercepted and interpreted by SOA Appliances as these messages transit networks. Therefore policy decisions and enforcement related to these policies can also be distributed throughout the network and centrally managed. SOA Appliances act as PDP (Policy Decision Points) and PEP (Policy Enforcement Points) as SOAP messages transit the network. While we think of SOA Governance as being the first major implementation and manage policies, one needs to keep in mind the broader view of policy. Policy in the networking world is usually limited to managing policies around prioritizing business applications relative to QoS. However SOA doesn’t narrowly limit the meaning of policy. In fact policy can be anything you want to manage and enforce, it just so happens that SOA Vendors are pushing Governance, Compliance, and Risk at this particular time, but could include contracts (between organizations or your customers), SLA’s, etc. In this environment we see the network participating more in the analysis, management and collection of metadata associated with services.
3) SOA Interoperability – SOA Interoperability is more of concern when we implement B2B SOA and the connected SOA Environments which are not compatible. Therefore to connect incompatible environments we may need SOA Gateways to broker between incompatible security, identity, policy and other dimensions. SOA Interoperability will definitely become more of a concern when we move to B2B SOA.
4) Embedded Analytics and Networked Business Intelligence – As SOA adoption moves to B2B environments we will see more opportunity for intelligence gathering. SOA Appliances and SOA Gateways can unobtrusively participate and gather information about services and the organizations that you have relationships with. SOA Appliances and Gateways can be used to gather information for Networked Business Intelligence decision making.
5) Future Applications – SOA is essentially still being developed and standards are evolving. Exactly how the network is going to participate in exchanges of services is still not fully understood and is a function of the value-add which these devices can bring.
SOA Networking is starting to be included with other SOA Solutions as a way of justifying their existence. Justifying SOA Appliances and SOA Gateways purely based upon security may be difficult because the ROI is harder to quantify. Bundling SOA Appliances/Gateways with delivering real SOA Solutions such as SOA Governance, Risk and Compliance solutions will make it easier to justify; since the value-add is more obvious and intrinsic to the overall solution.
Therefore the short answer is that networking can have something to do with Governance, but it is more likely that SOA Networking will become more important as you move beyond the Enterprise SOA into B2B SOA deployments where management of policies and intelligence gathering becomes more distributed. The value-add is difficult to see today and some vendors don't see the relevance while other do.
My bet is that you will want to expose your services beyond the enterprise at some point in the future, so you may want to understand where you SOA Vendor is headed with it's product development.
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Gary E. Smith
SOA Architect Series
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