To date, service management is viewed as a service provider activity, focusing on management
capabilities at the service end points. This has lead to several shortcomings in existing management
solutions, which limit their ability to manage increasingly distributed service networks.
Many solutions are container and platform-dependent.
Service management logic is usually embedded within business code, making modifying
either (management or business logic) more complicated and time-consuming.
Point-to-point service connectivity and heterogeneous management approaches frustrate efforts to
enforce common standards and practices across the enterprise and make monitoring service behavior
more difficult.
Static/custom code-based management logic forces administrators to wait on the design
process for service management and raises the cost of changing management characteristics,
thus making the architecture less flexible.
Businesses seeking greater returns from their service-oriented business processes must address
several resulting management challenges.
Managing services on a one-off, or point-to-point basis is too resource-intensive to scale in a
rapidly growing service environment.
At some point, any worthwhile service network will extend across domains and eventually outside the enterprise.
Services are usually distributed (both, internal and external to the enterprise) and tend to
be deployed and operated on heterogeneous platforms.
Application and business process development typically handle management requirements within
business logic code.
If not addressed, these issues can significantly undermine any value a business may be seeking
from moving to a SOA. More importantly, they can negatively impact the overall business in the following
ways:
Higher costs and times for development and administration of services
Business is slower to respond to competitive threats and changes in the marketplace because the higher
cost of changing management policies makes it willing to accept greater risk to justify changes.
Brand image is tarnished by unpredictable service quality resulting from inconsistent development standards,
mismatches in performance expectations and inability to adapt management logic at runtime.
Interdivisional disputes over service ownership and responsibility for service performance, behavior and
corrective actions.
Business innovation is inhibited due to longer times and higher costs to develop and administer new services.
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