Implementing SOA? Manage Your Web Services
by M. Wonacott, Principal Consultant, Vizzit Corporation
About the author...
You typically don't manage things until you realize you have a problem. And while
many organizations are building Web services applications as part of their Services-Oriented
Architecture (SOA) investments, most probably haven't yet reached a stage
where they've invested much in management infrastructure.
Companies should at least build instrumentation capabilities into applications from
the start, thus reducing the cost of adding this vital foundation component later
on when implementing a management infrastructure.
Don't take the view that Web services management is purely an extension of
either operational or systems management. Web services management is focused on
managing the interactions between systems.
Figure 1
It's necessary that developers embed the necessary hooks and functions into an application's
infrastructure to record data relating to performance, reliability and quality of
service. This provides a foundation for visibility into application behavior at
both a systems and a business level, and is thus a prerequisite for effective management
control.
There are a number of vendors who can add value in augmenting in-house work.
These should be looked at early on in the lifecycle.
Vendors to watch include Amberpoint, Oracle/BEA, CA, Workday/Cape Clear, HP/Mercury,
IBM, Progress/Sonic, TIBCO and Software AG/webMethods. This field
includes several high-value niche players. But take note: the market
continues to consolidate.
A solid product should be able to manage services wherever they originate, including
distributed services and composite applications.
Web services management isn't just about managing brand new Web services applications;
it's about managing the interactions that Web services enable between many different
forms of applications within a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
I welcome your comments.
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