The Open Group announced the creation of The SOA Governance Project, an effort that will investigate how enterprises can better control and facilitate the development of a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Driven by members of The Open Group's recently formed SOA Working Group, the new initiative will create a reference framework for SOA governance that can be used by organizations as they manage both new and ongoing SOA initiatives.

Key objectives of the project include:
-- the development of a standard definition of SOA governance (and distinguishing it from traditional IT governance);
-- the creation of reusable processes and models that enterprises can take advantage of to maintain greater consistency and control in their SOA projects; and
-- the development of a common language that can be used by enterprise architecture practitioners for communicating on SOA governance - both internally and with suppliers of SOA governance tools.

"While the successful deployment of SOA requires a high degree of control, the application of governance within this increasingly popular architectural style is often poorly understood," said Dr. Chris Harding, forum director for SOA and semantic interoperability at The Open Group. "In building a reference framework for SOA governance, the SOA Working Group hopes to help organizations reduce risks in undertaking SOA projects, optimize the benefits realized by deployments and facilitate broader SOA adoption overall."

The SOA Governance Project will be supported by contributing members of The Open Group, including industry-leading technology companies and consultants such as BEA Systems, Inc.; Capgemini; HP; and IBM.

The mission of The Open Group SOA Working Group is to develop and foster common understanding of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in order to facilitate alignment between the business and information technology communities. It does this by conducting a work program to produce definitions, analyses, recommendations, reference models, and standards to assist business and information technology professionals within and outside of The Open Group to understand and adopt SOA.