Gaining insight into the health of SOA infrastructures

As service-oriented architecture (SOA) is evolving from theory to practical applications, the demand for deriving actual benefits from the infrastructure flexibility it enables is increasing rapidly. However, an SOA implementation often poses capacity and performance management challenges for the IT (information technology) delivery organization, particularly when dispersed business applications run on heterogeneous systems and various internal and external infrastructure components are used to complete business service transactions. To help organizations that are considering or have engaged in SOA infrastructure implementations, IBM has developed innovative and non-intrusive capabilities to help determine the optimal infrastructure architecture for a particular SOA project and identify areas of performance improvement for running an SOA infrastructure. These capabilities are provisioned as infrastructure Healthcheck services for SOA, reflecting a trusted IT service management approach that focuses on prevention or a solution to an IT infrastructure capacity and performance management problem. This paper presents the development rationale for the key service delivery components, including the analysis process, the use of global (i.e., worldwide) delivery capabilities, and the proprietary assets and patented technologies used in performing the services. Insight into how these services can lead to significant positive results is exemplified via several commercial client engagements.