The Open Group, a vendor- and technology-neutral consortium focused on open standards and global interoperability within and between enterprises, today announced the availability of two new industry standards: the Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM) and SOA Governance Framework. OSIMM will provide an industry recognized maturity model for advancing the continuing adoption of SOA and Cloud Computing within and across businesses. The SOA Governance Framework is a free guide for organizations to apply proven governance standards that will accelerate service-oriented architecture success rates.

"These are two very different standards that are both important for the deployment of SOA within large organizations," said Dr. Chris Harding, forum director for SOA and semantic interoperability at The Open Group. "Enterprises use OSIMM when considering adopting SOA, to help them determine what level of SOA is appropriate to their needs and capabilities. They use the SOA Governance Framework once they have adopted SOA, to help them determine how to organize themselves to use it to their best advantage. Together, the standards enable enterprises to accelerate SOA deployment and generate direct business value much sooner."

OSIMM
As more organizations continue to embrace the use of services as the foundation for their next-generation IT infrastructures, it is increasingly important for them to assess their maturity within a complete SOA migration path and identify how to maximize business benefits from their adoptions. Many SOA maturity models exist today, however an industry-recognized adoption model and terminology based on open standards are both required for companies to realize the full potential of SOA. OSIMM leverages proven best practices within the industry, helping IT practitioners create a roadmap for their incremental adoption of SOA and Cloud Computing. Additionally, the model will help organizations achieve advanced levels of service integration that are specifically in line with their unique migration path and business goals.

"IBM is very pleased with today's announcement of the Open Service Integration Maturity Model standard which provides our customers with the ability to identify business goals and assess associated usage of services when creating SOA solutions," said Kerrie Holley, IBM fellow and worldwide chief technology officer of SOA Center of Excellence in Global Business Services. "OSIMM sets the foundation for an iterative, roadmap-based approach to deploying services aligned with organizational objectives. With standardization, customers are assured they can use these powerful concepts across diverse heterogeneous environments. IBM strongly supports OSIMM and its use in helping our customers as they execute on their services roadmap."

"The principles of service-orientation are crucial to achieving Boundaryless Information Flow(TM)," said Ron Tolido, chief technology officer, Capgemini Continental Europe and Asia Pacific. "Therefore we are committed to creating standards such as the Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model that will help our clients to benefit more and more from SOA."

"With our extensive experience helping clients in their efforts to achieve business value through service orientation, we understand that transforming an organization's behavior requires maturity beyond the underlying technology," says Scott A. Rosenberger, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "We support efforts like The Open Group's OSIMM that can help organizations prepare to evolve to the type of Services Thinking necessary to achieve true value from services and the growing cloud movement."

The first version of the OSIMM Technical Standard is available for download here: http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/catalog/c092.htm.

SOA Governance Framework

Industry adoption of SOA validates the importance of good governance practices in assuring that organizations reach and surpass their intended goals. The SOA Governance Framework was developed by The Open Group SOA Work Group to ensure enterprises can benefit from proven best practices without having to invest in developing a framework of their own, thereby reducing the overall risk associated with SOA. Unlike other governance frameworks that are focused on IT rather than enterprise architecture or SOA, such as ValIT and COBIT (from ISACA), and ITIL, the new framework provides specific guidance for governance of SOA.

"The SOA Governance Framework will be a very valuable instrument for Capgemini to support our SOA engagements," continued Tolido. "We believe SOA is a key enabler to achieve both cost-effective solutions and a high level of flexibility and openness. Working from proven and innovative best practices - captured in an open governance framework - will further accelerate our approach."