Policy Management

Policy Management is the heart of an Integrated SOA Governance Automation solution.  It brings together the varied system elements that deliver a comprehensive system.  The high-level elements of Governance, Management and Security all leverage policy extensively, and in fact integrate around a common policy management system.

As recently as 2006 many vendors continued to promote standalone registry/repository (often branded as governance), management, and security solutions.  As little as one year later it is difficult to a find a vendor that doesn’t at least claim to offer a comprehensive solution that addresses all of these elements.

There are many different kinds of policies ranging from operational governance policies like security, reliability, routing, and monitoring; through compliance policies that act on static metadata.  The key is to operationalize policy through deep integration between the policy governance and operation governance system elements. 

SOA Software introduced the concept of closed-loop SOA governance with the launch of its Workbench™ product in December 2006.  Closed-loop governance ensures that policies are defined and governed through an effective policy governance system, are implemented and enforced via security and management systems, and that these runtime systems deliver policy compliance data and metrics to the governance system so that it can audit that its policies are being implemented and enforced correctly.  This closed loop is essential for successful integrated SOA governance.