Registry vendors profiled can help companies maximize reuse and improve governance

IT managers can realize greater ROI from their Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) assets and minimize development risks by using SOA registries, a study issued today by Nucleus Research finds. Registries promote reuse of existing IT assets, help to align software development and enable IT managers to regulate how services are deployed across the enterprise.

"SOA represents both great ROI potential, but also significantly increased risk to the enterprise," said David O'Connell, senior analyst, Nucleus Research. "Registries provide an open line of communication that encourages service reuse, thus cutting custom development costs, while providing an effective means to govern how services are deployed to mitigate risk. They are an effective tool to derive maximum benefit from SOA investments."

Key findings from the study highlight the benefits of SOA registries, including:

• Increase reuse – Developers can only reuse a service if they know it exists, where it is and how to access it.
• Improved governance – Registries can regulate how, when and by whom services are used.
• Greater service creation – Once services are publishes, developers can modify them in order to create new services required by the organization.
• Improved enterprise stability – Registries have relational capabilities, enabling IT managers to describe not only the available services, but also how they relate to each other once deployed.
• Improved propagation – Registries can track who is using each service and when, giving IT managers a view of which services are most frequently reused and which developers have not bought onto SOA.
• Better cost accounting – By recording who uses each service, when they use it and how, registries enable IT managers to know how much value different business units are getting from SOA.

The study reviews registry solutions from BEA Software, Infravio, Iona, LogicLibrary, Mercury Interactive, SOA Solutions and webMethods. The study and related reports on SOA can be found at NucleusResearch.com

About Nucleus Research

Nucleus Research is a global provider of IT advisory and research services that provides CFOs, CIOs and their staffs with the real-world information they need to maximize the business returns from their technology investments. For more information, visit NucleusResearch.com.