© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012 TrademarksThe IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 1 of 21

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecturestandardsIBM SOA standards

Heather Kreger (kreger@us.ibm.com)Destinguished Engineer, CTO International StandardsIBM

Vince Brunssen (brunssen@us.ibm.com)Senior Software EngineerIBM

Robert Sawyer (rsawyer@us.ibm.com)SOA Marketing LeadIBM

Ali Arsanjani, Ph.D. (arsanjani@us.ibm.com)IBM Distinguished Engineer, CTO SOA EmergingTechnologiesIBM

Rob High (highr@us.ibm.com)IBM Fellow, VP - BPO FoundationIBM

17 January 2012

This article describes how the SOA reference architecture has been developed and usedby IBM to help customers increase business flexibility as well as IT flexibility. The SOA RAreference architecture being used to help organizations achieve advanced levels of businessagility and IT flexibility through service integration that are specifically in line with their uniqueSOA business objectives. IBM is also using an SOA reference architecture along with the Cloudreference architecture to help organizations define their cloud solutions.

IntroductionA Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) facilitates the creation of flexible, reusable assets forenabling end-to-end business solutions. As companies embrace the principles of SOA and the

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 2 of 21

techniques associated with SOA for different types of projects in different industries worldwide theneed for a reference architecture has become more evident. The usage of the SOA ReferenceArchitecture is a key enabler for the achievement of the value propositions of an SOA.

The new Open Group SOA Reference Architecture (SOA RA) standard provides guidelinesand options for making architectural, design, and implementation decisions in the architectureof service oriented solutions, including the architecture of cloud solutions. The goal of the SOAReference Architecture standard is to provide a blueprint for creating and evaluating architecture.Additionally, it provides insights, patterns and the building blocks for integrating fundamentalelements of an SOA into a solution or enterprise architecture.

The value of SOAThis style of architecture has come to be known as service oriented architecture (SOA),where rather than the implementations of components being exposed and known, only theservices provided are published and consumers are insulated from the details of the underlyingimplementation by a provider. Essentially, the decoupling of interface from implementation at theprogramming level has been elevated to an architectural level by loosely coupling the interface ofa service used by a Service Consumer from its implementation by a Service Provider as well asdecoupling the implementation from its binding.

SOA enables business and IT convergence through agreement on a (contract consisting of a)set of business-aligned IT services that collectively support an organization's business processesand business goals. Not only does it provide flexible decoupled functionality that can be reused,but also provides the mechanisms to externalize variations of quality of service in declarativespecifications such as WS-Policy and related standards. This loose-coupling enables a moreflexible composition of software components in a software solution. This composition enablesapplication developers to more rapidly modify their solutions in response to changes in businessrequirements. New solutions can be delivered quickly to satisfy new business requirements usingthis same compositional construct: i.e. by re-using components created in prior applications.Components can be designed to more closely align with discrete business needs for differentsituations.

Key Business Benefits of SOAAs a flexible and extensible architectural framework, SOA has the following defining capabilities:

• Reducing Cost: Provide the opportunity to consolidate redundant application functionality anddecouple functionality from obsolete and increasingly costly applications while leveragingexisting investments.

• Agility: Structure business solutions based on a set of business and IT services in such asway as to facilitate the rapid restructuring and reconfiguration of the business processes andsolutions that consume them.

• Increasing Competitive Advantage: Provide the opportunity to enter into new markets andleverage existing business capabilities in new and innovative ways using a set of looselycoupled IT services. Potentially increase market share and business value by offering newand better business services.

ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks®

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 3 of 21

• Time to Market: Deliver business-aligned solutions faster by allowing the business to decideon the key drivers of a solutions and allowing IT to rapidly support and implement thatdirection.

• Consolidation: Integrate across silo-ed solutions and organizations, reduce the physicalnumber of systems and enable consolidation of platforms under a program of "gracefultransition" from legacy spaghetti dependencies to a more organized and integrated set ofcoexisting systems.

• Alignment: Enable organizations to better align business goals to IT, enabling the businessto associate it with capabilities that an organization wants to achieve in alignment with itsstrategic plan, leading to both sustained agility and reuse over time.

The purpose and usage of a reference architectureThe purpose of a reference architecture is to provide solution and enterprise architects astandardized blueprint from which to architect solutions for their businesses. As shown in figure1, architectures, like reference architectures, exist on a continuum from very abstract wherearchitectural decisions and assumptions are identified and not made, to very concrete where mostof the assumptions and architectural decisions have been made.

Along this continuum exist domain, industry, enterprise and solution reference architectures. Tounderstand this diagram in its entirety you can reference the Navigating the SOA Open StandardsLandscape Around Architecture White Paper that can be found at http://www.opengroup.org/soa/source-book/stds/index.htm.

Figure 1. Reference Architecture Continuum

Reference architectures can be used to set the context for an architecture, to provide a commonfoundation of understanding for vendors and customers to map products to and design servicesfor, and to articulate a set of building blocks for solutions.

For SOA, reference architectures are used by architects in a variety of scenarios which includejump starting organizations that are adopting an SOA, helping integrators that are providingservices in the construction of an SOA, helping SOA product vendors that are building an SOA

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 4 of 21

component(s) to position their products in a standard way that can be understood by theircustomers and helping organizations that are building other SOA specifications and standards.

The value of a standardized SOA Reference ArchitectureThe standardization of the SOA RA gives an industry endorsed, vendor neutral starting point forcustomers creating SOA solutions. As such it can be used in situations where multiple companiesare partnering, in spite of changes in vendors or systems integrators, etc. The SOA RA provides acommon taxonomy and terminology for designing, building and describing SOA solutions. This cansave money and time and improve results.

For organizations that are adopting SOA, the SOA RA helps to create solutions that are drivenby business processes, business tools, message exchange, service integration, data accessand encapsulating legacy software and components. As architects apply the SOA modeling anddelivery methodologies every element of an SOA that is identified is mapped back to the SOARA providing a view of how the SOA solution is progressing. This also provides a very usefulcommunication tool for business and IT stakeholders within a given company or industry.

The SOA RA is also used to define capabilities and feasibility of solutions. This is done through achecklist of key elements that must be considered when an SOA solution is architected. The SOARA provides this through a definition of layers and architectural building blocks within those layers.Even taking it a step further within the layers and architectural building blocks there are designdecision points and interaction patterns that help to define thee SOA solution. For example, from atechnical perspective, the architect needs to answer questions such as:

• What are the considerations and criteria for producing an SOA solution?• How can an SOA solution be organized as an architectural framework with inter-connected

architectures and transformation capabilities?• How can an SOA solution be designed in a manner that maximizes asset reuse?

In order to address these issues, The Open Group SOA Reference Architecture standard presentsa reference architecture for SOA-based solutions. It provides a high level abstraction of an SOApartitioned and factored into layers, each of which provides a set of capabilities required to enablethe working of an SOA solution. Each layer addresses a specific subset of characteristics andresponsibilities that relate to unique value propositions within an SOA.

Underlying this layered architecture is a meta-model consisting of layers, capabilities, architecturalbuilding blocks (ABBs), interactions patterns, options and architectural decisions and relationshipsbetween capabilities, ABBs and layers. These will guide the architect in the creation andevaluation of the architecture.

What is going on in the real world with using an SOA ReferenceArchitecturesThe path to adopting services and SOA often requires organizations to deal with unique projectgoals and constraints. Many organizations experiment with Web services (by wrapping existingapplications) as a means of exploring the world of service integration, use the results to determine

ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks®

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 5 of 21

how to proceed beyond an initial phase. Some organizations engage in an enterprise-widebusiness transformation. Other organizations define their road maps, vision, strategy, and criteriafor assessment and governance. For any of those organizations, it’s useful to have an objectivestandard against which to measure current Service and SOA maturity and to create a roadmap toreach the desired level of maturity not for the sake of maturity alone, but to effect different businessoutcomes that can result from achievement of a specific level of maturity.

IBM recognized and led the separation of specific technology approaches like Web services fromSOA as a solution and business architecture. Through engagement with thousands of customersand governments, IBM established world class industry leadership in the development of SOAsolutions, and delivery of products to enable those solutions. IBM has developed industry leadingassets to support those engagements. Some of these key, tried and true, assets have been usedas the basis of recent Open Group SOA standards on governance, maturity models, terminology,and now The SOA Reference Architecture. Other papers are available to explain how IBM helpeddevelop and now supports these standards on governance and service adoption. This paper willfocus on IBM support of The Open Group Standard SOA Reference Architecture, now availablehere (http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soa-ref-arch/).

Overview of the SOA Reference Architecture

The SOA RA consists of a set of abstractions that collectively provide a, logical design of an SOA.Thus it answers the question of "What is a SOA?" by providing a set of architectural building blocksthat collectively answer the question in detail. During assessments of architectures or the design ofa solution architecture, or enterprise architecture, the SOA RA allows architects to use its contentssuch as the building blocks as a checklist of elements: architectural building blocks and theirrelations in each layer, the options available, decisions that need to be made at each layer. Thelayers provide a starting point for the separation of concerns needed to build an SOA. Each groupof the separated concerns are represented in their own "layer."

The design of the SOA RA provides architects with a blueprint that includes templates andguidelines that are used within the software development life-cycle. These facilitate and ultimatelyenable automation and streamlining the process of modeling and documenting the architecturallayers, the capabilities and the ABBs within them, options for layers and ABBs, mapping ofproducts to the ABBs and architectural and design decisions that contribute to the creation of theSOA.

The SOA RA is intended to support organizations adopting SOA, product vendors building theSOA infrastructure components, integrators engaged in the building of the SOA solutions andstandards bodies engaged in developing further specifications for SOA.

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 6 of 21

Figure 2. Logical solution view of the SOA RA

The functionality of the SOA portfolio is realized at the operational systems layer and thecomponent layer. The interfaces exposed are provided at the services layer. Note that theselayers have a set of cross cutting concerns such as Integration, Information, Quality of Serviceand Governance that are included as considerations in each of the above layers. Thus, threeof the layers address the implementation and interface with a service (the Operational SystemsLayer, the Service Component Layer and the Services Layer). Three of the layers support theconsumption of services (the Business Process Layer, the Consumer Layer and the IntegrationLayer). And four of the layers support cross-cutting concerns of a more supporting (sometimescalled non-functional or supplemental) nature (the Information Architecture Layer, the Quality ofService Layer, the Integration Layer and the Governance Layer). The SOA RA as a whole providesthe framework for the support of all the elements of an SOA, including all the components thatsupport services and their interactions.

Within each of the layers depicted in figure 2 there are Architectural Building Blocks (ABBs) thatrepresents a basic element of reusable functionality and fulfill the key responsibilities of thatlayer. Each ABB resides in a layer, supports capabilities, and has responsibilities. ABBs are alsoconnected to one another across the layers and provide a natural association between layers.If a particular connection between ABBs occurs consistently across layers to solve a certainproblem this then defines a pattern of ABBs as well as the valid interaction sequences between thearchitectural building blocks.

Along with the ABBs there are also the capabilities that they support. A capability is defined bythe Open Group in TOGAF 9, as "an ability that an organization, person, or system possesses".So, expanding on that definition, ABBs provide the technical resource to allow an organization,person or system to be able to provide their defined capability. An ABB, providing support for one

ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks®

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 7 of 21

or more capabilities, that can be realized by one or more components or products; examples of theresponsibilities of an ABB include: service definition, mediation, routing, etc.

Summary of the layers:The layers that are defined in an SOA RA are as follows:

• Operational Systems Layer - The Operational and IT Systems layer captures theorganization's infrastructure, both new and existing, needed to support the SOA solution atdesign, deploy and run time.This layer represents the intersection point between the actual runtime infrastructure andthe rest of the SOA which runs on that infrastructure. In addition, it is the integration pointfor an underlying Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) construct and the rest of the SOA in thewider context of cloud computing. Key requirements for this layer are outlined in the capabilitysection describing the capabilities provided to fulfill those requirements.

• Service Component Layer - The Service Component layer contains software components,each of which provide the implementation or "realization" for a service, or operation on aservice. The layer also contains the functional and technical components that facilitate aService Component to realize one or more services. Service components reflect the definitionof the service they represent, both in its functionality and its management and quality ofservice interactions. They "bind" the service contract to the implementation of the service inthe operational and IT systems layer. Service components are hosted in containers whichsupport a service specification.The service component layer enables IT flexibility through encapsulation and by enablingloose coupling. The separation of concerns is such that the consumer assumes that therealization of the service is faithful to its published description (service compliance) and theproviders ensures that such compliance is achieved. The details of the realization are ofno consequence to the consumer. Subsequently, the Provider organization may decide toreplace one component with another with the same description with no impact on consumersof the Service.

• Services Layer - The Services layer consists of all the logical services defined within the SOA.This layer contains the descriptions for services, business capabilities, and IT manifestationthat are used/created during design time as well as service contracts and descriptions that areused at runtime.The Services Layer is one of the horizontal layers which provide the business functionalitysupported in an SOA and describes functional capabilities of the services in an SOA.

• Business Process Layer - The Process Layer covers the process representation, compositionmethods, and building blocks for aggregating loosely coupled services as a sequencedprocess aligned with business goals. Data flow and control flow are used to enableinteractions between services and business processes. The interaction may exist within anenterprise or across multiple enterprises.The business process layer in the SOA Reference Architecture plays a central coordinatingrole in connecting business level requirements and IT-level solution components throughcollaboration with the integration layer, quality of service layer, information architecture layeras well as the services layer.

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 8 of 21

• Consumer Layer - The Consumer Layer is the point where consumers, whether if be aperson, program, browser or automation, interact with the SOA. It enables an SOA solutionto support a client-independent, channel agnostic set of functionality, which is separatelyconsumed and rendered through one or more channels (client platforms and devices). Thusit is the point of entry for all internal and external interactive consumers (humans and otherapplications/ systems) and services (e.g. B2B scenarios).This layer provides the capability to quickly create the front end of the business processesand composite applications in order to respond to changes in the marketplace. It enableschannel independent access to those business processes supported by various applicationsand platforms. This decoupling between the consumer and the rest of the underlying SOAprovides organizations the ability to support agility, enhanced reuse and improved quality andconsistency.

• Integration Layer - The integration layer is a cross-cutting concern that enables and providesthe capability to mediate, which includes transformation, routing and protocol conversionto transport service requests from the service requester to the correct service provider. Itsupports the capabilities required for enabling an SOA such as routing, protocol support andconversion, messaging/interaction style, support for heterogeneous environment, adapters,service interaction, service enablement, service virtualization, service messaging, messageprocessing and transformation. The integration layer is also responsible for maintaining thecoherency of the solution in the presence of a loosely-coupled system.The integration that occurs here is primarily the integration of service component, service, andprocess layers (the "functional" layers). For example, this is where binding (late or otherwise)of services occurs for process execution. This allows a service to be exposed consistentlyacross multiple customer facing channels.

• Quality of Service Layer - The Quality of Service layer is a cross-cutting concern that supportsnon functional requirement (NFR) related concerns of an SOA and provides a focal pointfor dealing with them in any given solution. It provides the means of ensuring that an SOAmeets its requirements with respect to: monitoring, reliability, availability, manageability,transactionality, maintainability, scalability, security, safety, life cycle, etc. It has the samescope as the traditional FCAPS (Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, Security)from ITIL or RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) The same kinds of managementand monitoring that apply to businesses today are important for managing services andSOA solutions and may need extensions to handle the service oriented nature and the crossdomain boundaries of many SOA solutions.

• Information Architecture Layer - The Information Layer is a cross-cutting concern thatis responsible for manifesting a unified representation of the information aspect of anorganization as provided by its IT services, applications, and systems enabling businessneeds and processes and aligned with the business vocabulary – glossary and terms.This layer includes information architecture, business analytics and intelligence, meta-dataconsiderations and ensures the inclusion of key considerations pertaining to informationarchitectures that can also be used as the basis for the creation of business analytics andbusiness intelligence through data marts and data warehouses. This includes meta-datacontent that is stored in this layer. It also supports the ability for an information services

ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks®

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 9 of 21

capability, enabling a virtualized information data layer capability. This enables the SOA tosupport data consistency, and consistency in data quality.

• Governance Layer – The Governance layer is a cross-cutting concern that ensures thatthe services and SOA solutions within an organization are adhering to the defined policies,guidelines and standards that are defined as a function of the objectives, strategies andregulations applied in the organization and that an SOA solutions are providing the desiredbusiness value. SOA governance activities shall conform to Corporate, IT and EnterpriseArchitecture governance principles and standards. The Governance layer will be adapted tomatch and support the target SOA maturity level of the organization.

Types of Services:Services are naturally a key concept in any service oriented architecture and it is important torealize that there can be many different categories. The SOA Reference Architecture defines astandard categorization scheme for services. Services here are categorized according to what theydo, i.e. their function or purpose (though categories are not mutually exclusive) in order to aid inensuring both coverage and shared understanding. Of course, other categorization schemes arealso possible and helpful.

Partitioning services into groups is a common activity in the development of the services andservice portfolio in a services oriented architecture. Categories and groups of services affect howboth business and IT views and understands the architecture and the portfolio of services thatsupports it.

The figure below shows a functional categorization scheme for services found in a typicalenterprise.

Figure 3. Types of Services

The categories of services are broken down in figure 3. Services connected to the 'ServiceIntegration Services', such as interaction services, process services, information services, etc.,are considered to be domain specific. These are solution specific and require implementationsunique to the domain or solution being developed. Domain specific services may be purchased,but generally require extensive customization or extension.

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 10 of 21

The remaining services categories are considered to be domain independent. These domainindependent categories include development services, management services, etc. Services ofthis category can be used directly in many different domains or solutions. In general domainindependent services are used to plan, develop, support and manage the domain specific servicesin the solution. Often domain independent services can be purchased and used without extensivecustomization.

Note that the Interaction, Process and Information service categories support the Model-View-Controller Pattern. The value of separating these aspects in the traditional view of architecture stillholds true for SOA.

Services categories are:

• Mediation Services - responsible for binding service consumers with service providers –transparently resolving location to achieve an optimal routing of requests across the networkand meet the goals of the business. Mediations typically adds additional value by doing someuseful activity, like logging or translation, in addition to the connectivity.

• Interaction Services – provide the presentation logic of the business design and supportsthe interaction between applications and end-users.

• Process Services - include various forms of compositional logic, especially business processflows.

• Information Services - provide the data logic of business design. Implementations provideaccess to the persistent data of the business, support data composition of the business, andprovide their own sub-architecture for managing the flow of data across the organization.

• Access Services - integrate legacy applications and functions into the service orientedarchitecture solution.

• Security Services - address protection against threats across the vulnerable dimensions ofan SOA. They are responsible for protecting interactions between service consumers andservice providers as well as protecting all of the elements that contribute to the architecture.

• Partner Services - capture the semantics of partner interoperability that have a directrepresentation in the business design.

• Lifecycle Service – support managing the lifecycle of SOA solutions and all of the elementsthat comprise them across development and management ranging from strategy toinfrastructure.

• Asset and Registry Services - provide access to the assets that are part of the overallarchitecture. This includes service descriptions, software services, policy, documentation andother assets or artifacts that are essential to the operation of the business.

• Infrastructure Services - provide efficient utilization of resources, ensure the integrity of theoperational environment, and balance workload to meet service level objectives, isolate workto avoid interference, perform maintenance, secure access to confidential business processesand data, and simplify overall administration of the system.

• Management Services - provide the set of management tools and metrics used tomonitor service flows, the health of the underlying system, the utilization of resources, theidentification of outages and bottlenecks, the attainment of service goals, the enforcement ofadministrative policies and recovery from failures.

ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks®

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 11 of 21

• Development Services – supports the entire suite of architecture tools, modeling tools,development tools, visual composition tools, assembly tools, methodologies, debugging aids,instrumentation tools, and discovery agents needed to construct an SOA solution.

• Strategy and Planning Services - supports creating vision, blueprint and transition planfor improving business outcomes, along with the services that process the strategies of thebusiness to create an implementation roadmap covering both business and IT.

• Business Application Services - implement core business logic where the implementationsare created specifically within a business model.

• Business Services - capture the business function and are offered to as course-grainedservices to external consumers.

The SOA RA provides comprehensive scope and detail. It enables to architects be confidentnothing is missed' when thinking about the services and solution building blocks. Based onextensive real world project experience, IBM is uniquely equipped to provide the breadth ofexperience and products needed to support SOA and this SOA RA standard.

How IBM supports the SOA RA Standard

Services Products

IBM not only has a comprehensive set of fire tested services offerings, but is the market leader inSOA, with experience helping customers with SOA.

Perhaps you have already started your SOA transformation but want an evaluation of how youare doing. Maybe you are experiencing performance issues and would like an assessment of thedesign, infrastructure or implementation. Perhaps you need help sizing your SOA solution andensuring the solution will operate under peek loads. IBM Services can help assess your plansand recommended improvements for greater business value. The SOA Diagnostic looks at theoverall SOA strategy, governance (including security), infrastructure readiness, and ongoing SOAdevelopment projects. In addition we focus on capacity and performance evaluations to ensureyour SOA will meet all your business and IT requirements.

The Open Group SOA RA standard is based on IBM's SOA Solution Stack, a key asset that is partof the services mentioned above, as well as Service Oriented Modeling and Architecture (SOMA),IBM's world famous method for identifying the right services for your solution.

Now, IBM is using this breadth of experience in applying SOA to Cloud solutions for yourorganization. See http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offerfamily/gbs/a1028751.

Software Products

IBM has the broadest scope of products in the industry to implement the right SOA solution foryou. At every step along your roadmap, in every layer of your architecture, you can use IBMproducts to provide you the right tools and infrastructure for your SOA at any stage in its lifecycle– plan, develop, deploy, manage. IBM uses the following diagram as an architectural referencemodel to illustrate the aspects of implementing an SOA.

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 12 of 21

The IBM products and services can also be mapped to the common types of services that the SOAReference Architecture standardizes:

Figure 4. IBM Software Product Mapping, Part 1

Figure 5. IBM Software Product Mapping, Part 2

IBM brands support the Model/Assemble/Deploy/Manage lifecycle of your SOA solution:

• Rational supports Model and Assemble by providing tools to model your SOA solution andbusiness processes. It also provides products to support development services.

• WebSphere supports Deploy by providing runtime for services implementations, serviceclients, and business processes. It also provides products to support the operational servicesneeded to deploy your SOA solution.

• Tivoli supports Manage by providing monitoring and operational management of yourservices, solution, and infrastructure. It also provides products to support Managementservices.

• Lotus provides tools to integrate access to people and collaboration to your businessprocesses. It provides support of the Interaction services. Looking at the IBM SOA referencearchitecture above here is a sampling of the vast array of IBM products available for each ofthe aspects of an SOA.

ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks®

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 13 of 21

• Information Management supports Deploy by providing information management servicesthroughout the information supply chain.

IBM products provide both support for the layers and the services in the SOA RA.

• Strategy and Planning Services are provided by Global Business Service's ComponentBusiness Modeling (CBM) services which helps you methodically examine your business andidentify the right set of business components and services for you. Service Oriented Modelingand Architecture (SOMA) services and tools help you identify the right services for our needs.Rational Unified Process (RUP) for SOMA provides best practice offering accelerates thisprocess, especially for modernizing legacy systems. In addition, IBM Rational sells RationalSystems Architect and Rational Focal Point as tools for enterprise architects which providedecision support system for market-driven product and portfolio management. RationalRequisitePro traces business requirements to goals and steps in the service developmentlifecycle.

• Business Services and Events help business analysts capture your business design fordocumentation, compliance, simulation, and optimization. WebSphere Business Monitorhelps you create dashboards for visualizing performance of your business which helps youunderstand how your business design achieves your business objectives and recommendsoptimizations. Cognos Business Intelligence provides business reporting, analysis anddashboards on your SOA. WebSphere Operational Decision Management enhances BPMand SOA infrastructures with business insight and awareness around event driven businessconditions.

• Development Services are provided by Rational via Rational Software Architect whichprovides you a development environment for your business services on Windows, Linux,i, and z systems. Rational Team Concert enables collaborative development in theseenvironments. Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest automate and enforce developmentprocesses for better insight, predictability, management, and control of the softwaredevelopment lifecycle. To complement this, IBM Integration Designer helps you createbusiness process flows, state machines, and business rules.

• Asset and Registry Services are provided by Rational Asset Manager which helps create,modify, govern, find and reuse any type of development assets including those for yourSOA solution. WebSphere Service Registry and Repository provides the tools to provideregistration and location of services to support late binding to services.

• Service Integration Services are essentially the Enterprise Service Bus capability andis supported by the WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus which provides a basic fabricfor transparent interconnection of services across an enterprise distributed network. It isextended by WebSphere Message Broker which provides message transformations for non-XML data types and provides message based integration. WebSphere Message Queueenables scalable, reliable information exchange across different platforms. WebSphereDataPower SOA appliances augment and accelerate your SOA application, specifically,WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance XI52 and WebSphere DataPower XMLAccelerator XA35 Appliance off loads Web service processing and XML processingrespectively.

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 14 of 21

• Business Application Services are hosted in WebSphere Application Server, a highlyavailable hosting environment for basic SOA business services and a platform forWebSphere Portal, IBM Business Process Management (BPM) and WebSphereESB. Standards based programming models for SOA, SCA, SIP, Web 2.0, and JPA aresupported. WebSphere Application Server is augmented for scale with WebSphere eXtendedDeployment (XD) and WebSphere Network Deployment expands the programmingmodel for common high end computing requirements. WebSphere eXtended DeploymentCompute Grid enables sharing business logic across transaction and batch paradigms.WebSphere eXtreme Scale provides distributed caching essential for elastic scalabilityand next-generation SOA and cloud environments. Business applications are enabled byperformant data management systems: CICS, an application and transaction server, and IMS,a transaction and hierarchical database management system. Both CICS and IMS have beenenabled for an SOA exploitation.

• Process Services are supported fully by IBM Business Process Management which isa primary hosting environment for business processing – both flows and business statemachines. WebSphere Operation and Decision Management delivers a business rulesmanagement system to control and manage business policy and processes. WebSphereBusiness Events helps businesses detect, evaluate, and respond to the impact of businessevents based on the discovery of actionable event patterns.

• Interaction Services are supported by WebSphere Portal which is a hosting environment forthe user interaction logic for your SOA application and allows interfaces to be aggregated intoa single user page. Lotus Sametime, a unified communications platform, enables invocationof services and engagement of people in business processes. IBM Mashup Center enablesyou to use dynamic situational applications to connect users with business services.

• Information Services are provided by data warehousing and information integration products.InfoSphere Master Data Management centrally manages business critical master dataacross customer, product and account domains in contrast to IBM Information Server whichis a data integration platform for complex, heterogeneous, distributed information. CognosBusiness Integrator enables you to explore and interact with any data, in any combinationand spanning the entire spectrum of time.

• Partner Services are supported through Sterling B2B Integration and WebSphereDataPower Appliance which enables business to business integration with trading partnersvia a centralized and consolidated trading partner and transaction management platform forprocess and data integration.

• Access Services are supported via WebSphere Adapters which provides adapters to avariety of legacy information systems.

• Infrastructure Services are supported by WebSphere Virtual Enterprise providesapplication virtualization to lower cost and increase flexibility, agility, availability and reliability.Virtualization software manages the utilization of middleware and hardware from IBM andother vendors. IBM is a trusted provider of systems, servers and storage for your business,this includes leading edge Power Systems running AIX or Linux, and BladeCenterintegrated platforms with built in scalability and manageability. IBM is famous for theunmatched processing power and high availability of our System z Series.

• Management Services include both security and runtime management. Security is providedby Tivoli Identity Manager, Tivoli Federated Identity Manager, Tivoli Security Policy

ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks®

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 15 of 21

Manager and Tivoli Access Manager provides a uniform point of administration of users,federation of user information, and privilege management Tivoli Compliance InsightManager provides a automated user monitoring for security compliance. WebSphereDataPower XML Security Gateway XS40 and XG45 integrates Tivoli's federated identity,security, and directory services into your SOA network processing. Monitoring, provisioning,and automation are supported by Tivoli Composite Application Manager (ITCAM), anintegrated product set (including ITCAM for SOA) which enables IT services managementacross all layers of the SOA RA, Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator (TIO) which provides supportmanaging and automating your administrative and management workflows, and initiatingthe workflows in response to events in the information system, and Tivoli ProvisioningManager which extends TIO with workflows for automating the deployment environmentfor provisioning hardware and software. Tivoli Change and Configuration ManagementDataBase (CCMDB) is the foundation for automating and supporting change andconfiguration management processes as described by ITIL, Tivoli Application DependencyDiscovery (TADDM) delivers automated discovery and configuration tracking capabilitiesto build application maps that provide real-time visibility into application complexity. TivoliUsage and Accounting Manager assesses usage and costs of shared computing resources.Tivoli Business Service Manager (TBSM) provides real-time service availability visibilityand intelligence on dashboards, as well as visualizes the health of critical business servicesand associated SLAs. IBM Systems Director provides platform management of physical andvirtual systems across multi-system environments which simplify virtualization.

• Lifecycle Services are supported by Rational Method Composer is a flexible softwaredevelopment process platform with a best practice library that will help you deliver customizedyet consistent process guidance to your project team. Rational Requirements Composerprovides visual and textual techniques for capture of business objectives and elaborationof requirements in a collaborative environment. Rational Build Forge automates andaccelerates the build and release process.

How SOA lays the foundation for Cloud

The SOA RA, as standardized by The Open Group, applies to Cloud architectures and is theunderlying architecture for the IBM Cloud Computing Reference Architecture and has beensubmitted to The Open Group (IBM CCRA). This section will explain where there are newconsiderations for cloud architectures and show how they are supported by the SOA RA.

The functional concerns: operational systems, service components, services, business processesand consumer interfaces; all exist in and are relevant to Cloud.

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 16 of 21

Figure 6. Cloud foundation architecture

For the Cloud architecture, special focus is required for the:

• Operational Layer: Infrastructure is part of the operational systems layer, but is oftenhighlighted in Cloud architectures because Cloud imposes new requirements on infrastructureto enable broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, virtualization andscalability.

• Service Layer: The common cloud service types, *aaS, are located in the services layer.These cloud service types, like other services, use and sometimes expose assets in theOperational systems layer. For cloud services, the type of asset exposed is often the focus ofthe service type, ie within operational systems, hardware infrastructure is exposed as IaaS,and middleware is exposed as PaaS, and business process as BPaaS.

• Business Process: Business processes participate in a Cloud solution much like they do inSOA solutions, they can be provided as a service (BPaaS) or be the consumer of services(whether they are cloud services or not). Additionally, business processes within a cloudprovider organization need to be restructured and streamlined in novel ways to meet muchfaster time-to-deliver, time-to-change and cost objectives.

• Consumer Layer: The consumer layer is more strictly and carefully separated from theservices and service provider to allow pooling and substitution of cloud services or providers.

The cross cutting concerns in the SOA RA: integration, quality of service, information andgovernance: are important concerns for all cloud architectures and solutions, just like they arefor SOA. The fact that they are cross cutting means that each of the functional layers may haveinteractions with capabilities in the cross cutting layers.

For the Cloud architecture, there must be special focus on the:

• Quality of Service (QOS) layer: The Quality of Service cross cutting concern has additionalsignificant requirements for Cloud for management and security in order to enable on-demandself-service and measured service requirements as well as critical customer requirements forresiliency, security, performance, automated management, operational, and business support.The management support can be represented as a Common Cloud Management Platform

ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks®

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 17 of 21

in the SOA RA QOS layer, which includes support for operational and business supportservices, aka OSS and BSS. This is critical for driving economies-of-scale by delivering manycloud services based on the same foundation.

• Governance for cloud solutions will also have some unique patterns of requirements neededto support governance across organizational boundaries. Providers and consumers will oftenneed to negotiate with cloud providers on how to execute on an iterative governance processthat ensures that the cloud solution and services are delivering appropriately and continue tobe aligned with business requirements.

For the cloud ecosystem, cloud service consumers, providers and creators are the common highlevel roles identified in the cloud architectures.

It is important to look at Cloud in the context of SOA, and Cloud solutions in the context of thelarger SOA solutions underpinning them.

The cross cutting concerns for integration and information are still important and must beconsidered in the development of any Cloud solution architecture. However, cloud does notintroduce any new principles or concerns to these cross cutting layers.

To make it easier to focus on the Cloud concerns rather than the SOA concern, we can lift theCloud concerns into its own diagram, as we show in figure 7.

Figure 7. IBM Cloud Computing Reference Architecture

The concepts and architectural elements not depicted in the CCRA are still implied and present viaits SOA RA heritage.

Conclusion: Why IBM for building your SOA SolutionA recent Gartner article (Application and Integration Platforms Key Initiative Overview July 22,2011) advises clients to, "make SOA a prerequisite architecture".

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 18 of 21

IBM is recognized as the SOA market share leader for 7 years and counting. Wintergreen'srecently released their SOA software market, shares and forecasts paper ascribes 78% of themarket to IBM, with our nearest competitor at a scant 4%.

IBM possesses the:

• Largest customer base with 8000+ customers and over 100 success stories on ibm.com• Strongest ecosystem, including 7400+ business partners• Industry's highest level of expertise and investment with 13,000+ assets in the SOA business

catalog and the deepest and broadest solution portfolio and services• Continual leadership in both the Forrester SOA Wave and Gartner SOA Magic Quadrant

evaluations

Importantly, IBM's SOA strategy is built on open standards – for interoperability andstandardization. IBM's leadership in standardization of The SOA Reference Architecture, The SOAOntology, OSIMM and SOA Governance Framework in The Open Group are examples of ourcommitment to standards for SOA architects.

ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks®

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 19 of 21

Resources

• "IBM SOA Standards" (developerWorks, Jan 2012) highlights how standards are importantfor SOA solutions enhancing customer results and enabling interoperability.

• 100 SOA Questions and Answers, Kerrie Holley & Ali Arsanjani, Prentice-Hall, 2010, p149.• SOA Governance: Governing Shared Services On-Premise and in the Cloud, Thomas

Erl, Stephen G. Bennet, Benjamin Carlyle, Clive Gee, Robert Laird, Anne Thomas Manes,Robert Moores, Robert Schneider, Leo Shuster, Andre Tost, Chris Venable & Filippos Santas,Prentice Hall.

• Executing SOA: A Practical Guide for the Service-Oriented Architect, Norbert Bieberstein,Robert G. Laird, Keith Jones & Tilak Mitra, IBM Press.

• SOA governance: Achieving and Sustaining Business and IT Agility, William A. Brown,Robert Laird, Clive Gee & Tilak Mitra, IBM Press.

• Dynamic SOA and BPM: Best Practices for Business Process Management and SOA Agility,Marc Fiammante, IBM Press.

• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Compass: Business Value, Planning, and EnterpriseRoadmap, Norbert Bieberstein, Sanjay Bose, Marc Fiammante, Keith Jones & Rawn Shah,IBM Press.

• The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture: A Systems-Based Approach for UnlockingBusiness Insight, Mario Godinez, Eberhard Hechler, Klaus Koenig, Steve Lockwood, MartinOberhofer & Michael Schroeck, IBM Press.

• SOA for the Business Developer: Concepts, BPEL, and SCA (Business Developers series),Ben Margolis, MC Press.

• Evaluate IBM products in the way that suits you best: Download a product trial, try a productonline, use a product in a cloud environment, or spend a few hours in the SOA Sandboxlearning how to implement Service Oriented Architecture efficiently.

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks/

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 20 of 21

About the authors

Heather Kreger

Heather Kreger is IBM’s CTO of International Standards and lead architect for SOAStandards in Software Group. She has 15 years of standards experience and hasled the development of standards for SOA, Cloud, Web services, Managementand Java in ISO/IEC, W3C, OASIS, DMTF, and The Open Group. Heather is theauthor of numerous articles, specifications, “Java and JMX, Building ManageableSystems” book, and editor of 'Navigating the SOA Open Standards LandscapeAround Architecture'.

Vince Brunssen

Vince Brunssen is a Senior Software Engineer at IBM working in the StandardsOrganization. He is currently leading efforts in OASIS to standardize SOA RepositoryArtifact Model and Protocol (S-RAMP). He is also a contributor to SOA standardsefforts in The Open Group.

Robert Sawyer

Robert Sawyer is a product marketing manager for IBM WebSphere, focusingon SOA Solutions. Prior to this role, he worked closely in the event processingspace, helping to define IBM's business event processing (BEP) category levelmessaging and go-to-market strategy. Past roles also include software engineeringresponsibilities with several IBM groups and products, including ECM, the electronicmedia management system (EMMS) and IBM SCORE (Solution for Compliance in aRegulated Environment), a healthcare and life sciences industry solution.

Ali Arsanjani, Ph.D.

Dr. Ali Arsanjani is CTO of SOA Emerging Technologies within IBM Global Services.He leads a team responsible for developing worldwide competency in SOA andincreasing delivery excellence of SOA solutions using IBM and non-IBM tools andSOA offerings, most of which he has co-developed. He is responsible for IBM vision,strategy and execution of that strategy in the SOA space of emerging technologiesand SOA offerings. He is a hands-on, sought-after architect around the world onIBM's largest accounts. To accomplish this Dr. Arsanjani works with IBM Software

ibm.com/developerWorks/ developerWorks®

The IBM advantage for SOA reference architecture standards Page 21 of 21

Group, Research as well as other parts of IBM Global Business Services to deliverySOA Solutions for clients using IBM tools, technologies and latest SOA offerings. Inhis role as Chief Architect for the SOA and Web Services Center of Excellence withinIBM Global Services, he and his team specialize in harvesting and developing best-practices for the modeling, analysis, design and implementation of SOA and WebServices. He leads the internal IBM worldwide SOA and Web Services Communityof Practice (6000+ members) and is the principal author of the (Service-orientedModeling and Architecture) SOMA method for SOA as well as other assets, offeringsand tools around SOA.He has been focusing on SOA Tooling with an extension andplug-in to Rational Software Architect called SOMA Modeling environment (SOMA-ME) which provide tooling support for IBM's SOA Methods and assets for SOASolution development. This has been described in the August 2008 edition of the IBMSystems Journal. Dr. Arsanjani is engaged in developing SOA competency aroundthe world in multiple industries and countries, working not only to develop teamsto support the deployment of IBM tools and assets in the SOA space, but also toengage on a day to day basis with IBM's largest clients. Dr. Arsanjani not only worksin executing a global strategy for GBS but also works to assess and develop tools tosupport IBM's offerings. He represents IBM in standards bodies such as The OpenGroup and is responsible for co-leading the SOA Reference Architecture and SOAMaturity Model standards within that body. Inside of IBM he leads research efforts inemerging technologies, tools and consulting offerings that combine services with thesoftware required to successfully deliver those services, effectively, in a scalable andrepeatable fashion across the world to more than 6000 practitioners.

Rob High

Rob High is the chief architect for the SOA Foundation, an IBM Fellow, VicePresident, and member of the IBM Academy of Technology. He is responsible forensuring an open industry architectural definition of the principles of business and ITalignment enabled by SOA and Business Process Optimization, as well as ensuringIBM's software and services portfolio is architecturally grounded to enable for efficientSOA-based solutions. This responsibility extends across the IBM software portfolio,including WebSphere, Rational, Tivoli, Lotus, and Information Management productsrelevant to enabling SOA.

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012(www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml)Trademarks(www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/trademarks/)