Service-Oriented Architecture Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise

Chapter 1. The SOA Governance Imperative

Since my last Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) book, in which I dedicated an entire chapter to the topic of SOA governance, industry interest in governance has exploded. The challenges of enterprise SOA governance have moved to the foreground across the IT industry as interest in SOA has increased, and as the many SOA practitioners out there have reached the same conclusion: SOA governance is mandatory for any measure of SOA success. Understanding and implementing effective SOA governance has become a corporate imperative, and thus the topic requires the depth of coverage that this book provides. Yet, despite all the interest in the topic, governance is one of the most misunderstood, emotionally charged, and enigmatic concepts in the industry. We will attempt to address these challenges in the chapters of this book.