Rational SOA lifecycle management solutions

If you need to create, customize, and deploy SOA governance and delivery processes, Rational recommends IBM Rational Method Composer plug-in for SOA governance.

This plug-in helps you create and deploy the established governance approach by selecting only the policies and process components you need. Once defined in IBM Rational Method Composer, the customized processes automatically drive project frameworks within IBM Rational Portfolio Manager.

If you need to identify and manage SOA projects and resources throughout the entire lifecycle in alignment with defined SOA processes, Rational recommends IBM Rational Portfolio Manager.

Rational Portfolio Manager enables real-time monitoring of SOA projects across the software portfolio to ensure that policies are followed and that projects are meeting established performance goals.

Rational Portfolio Manager uses portlets to provide visibility into project progress and quality metrics gathered from the development and management tools in the IBM Rational® Team Unifying Platform™. You can identify individual project goals, determine the types of resources needed to complete a project, and pinpoint critical project milestones.

If you need to enforce SOA governance policies and procedures across functionally diverse and geographically distributed teams, Rational recommends IBM Rational ClearQuest®.

Rational ClearQuest automates and enforces development processes for better insight, predictability, and control of the software lifecycle. Visibility is improved with real-time status and reporting and more effective team communication. Coordination is enhanced with automated processes and workflows and the following security features, which enable closed-loop software delivery:

• Electronic signature

• User authorization

• Audit trails

• Lifecycle traceability

If you need to:

• Maintain asset integrity and security

• Encourage the reuse of existing services in building applications

Rational recommends the following:

IBM Rational Asset Manager facilitates reuse by helping create, modify, govern, find, and consume any type of development assets, including SOA assets. It improves governance with easy discovery and federated search across the SOA lifecycle through integrations with IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository.

IBM Rational ClearCase® helps you manage and control software development assets. You can establish a repository for service and composite application building blocks such as source code, service interface declarations, software architecture models, and business process modes that are under construction.

User authentication and audit features provide security and enforce governance policies on when, what, and by whom services can be changed. Integration with design, development, build, test, and deployment tools enables full asset lifecycle management.

If you need to:

• Monitor SOA infrastructure performance

• Scale quickly and cost-effectively to meet business demands for composite applications

IBM recommends IBM Tivoli® Change and Configuration Management Database.

Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database automatically discovers and manages information about your IT environment, including IT resources, configuration items, user identities, and the interrelationships among these entities. It helps you meet service level commitments for applications and systems that share services.