The one thing that I find consistent in any customer IT environment working with SOA is heterogeneity. Whether it pertains to runtime platforms, intermediaries – ESBs and appliances, development tooling or back-end applications, there are almost always more than one.

SOA Governance offers the promise of visibility and control but only if it can work with and enforce polices across heterogeneous infrastructure. To that end, the industry needs interoperability efforts with teeth. Not just press release-only relationships (otherwise known as Barney relationships) but real collaboration where vendors work together to achieve integration and interoperability based on standards that can be shared and replicated across a variety of infrastructure.

HP is driving one such effort called the Governance Interoperability Framework. We invite all industry vendors working on pieces of the SOA puzzle who want to participate in this domain called governance to take a look at the GIF spec and participate in the GIF community.

Just don’t take my word for it, check out the recent blog by industry expert Anne Thomas Manes at http://apsblog.burtongroup.com/2008/03/hpsystinet-fina.html

You can access the GIF spec at HP.com at www.hp.com/go/soa

and the Wikipedia posting here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance_Interoperability_Framework