IBM adds to SOA management services

Services division plans to help customers tackle the complexity of tracking Web services and loosely coupled apps.

IBM Global Services last week announced immediate upgrades to its offerings that the company says will help bring management best practices to large organizations planning to roll out service-oriented architecture applications, as well as those already in the midst of their SOA implementations.

IBM, which says it invests about $1 billion per year in SOA technology and services, is augmenting its Global Services SOA Management Practice by incorporating software from the company's WebSphere, Tivoli and Rational groups into its best practices. The company also is announcing governance services around SOA, as well as partnering with two additional SOA providers, Actional and DataPower.

Company officials say the continued investment is necessary as customers tackle the job of managing SOA environments.

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IBM Global Services last week announced immediate upgrades to its offerings that the company says will help bring management best practices to large organizations planning to roll out service-oriented architecture applications, as well as those already in the midst of their SOA implementations.

IBM, which says it invests about $1 billion per year in SOA technology and services, is augmenting its Global Services SOA Management Practice by incorporating software from the company's WebSphere, Tivoli and Rational groups into its best practices. The company also is announcing governance services around SOA, as well as partnering with two additional SOA providers, Actional and DataPower.

Company officials say the continued investment is necessary as customers tackle the job of managing SOA environments.

"SOA enables reuse and introduces a lot of change to enterprise environments," says Michael Liebow, vice president of Web Services and SOA at IBM Global Services. "We believe companies should prepare for the management challenge by building it into their SOA technologies and processes from the start."

The SOA Management Practice offers services that involve IBM staff helping corporate IT shops identify the services they want to adapt to SOA, to model the services and to incorporate people and process alongside the technology. The management aspect is part technology and part process, or IT governance, Liebow says.

Industry watchers say IBM and HP offer management services specific to SOA primarily because few network, IT or application managers have experience managing Web services and SOA applications, and the technology can grow in complexity quickly.

"Managing applications was more about tackling a single application in the past. Now it can include managing dozens of components, so the sheer quantity of what needs to be managed is a challenge," says Sophie Mayo, a senior analyst with IDC. She says managing SOA applications not only requires measuring the overall performance but also monitoring how the components that make up a service perform, tracking which applications access the components and how often, and managing the availability of re-usable components.

To help provide management technology, IBM Global Services will incorporate its Common Services Delivery Platform that is based on the company's WebSphere SOA Foundation technology. Using this technology, Liebow says the company can help customers track business processes and the SOA assets associated with them, and re-deploy those components not in use to get optimal performance of SOA-enabled applications.

IBM also announced it will resell technology from Actional and DataPower in its SOA services deals with customers. IBM first announced the SOA Management Practice initiative last year and at that time established a similar partnership with AmberPoint.

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