Online SOA Readiness Assessment

Oracle have just made available an online SOA Readiness Assessment,  It asks you a few questions focused around the 8 areas in Oracles SOA maturity model and then provides a report.  The assessment is obviously very lightweight, but it is worth taking for several reasons.

• It gives you some reasonable suggestions about what steps to take next.
• It provides an initial SOA maturity assessment and compares it to your peers.
• It provides links to a number of helpful resources inside and outside Oracle.

The picture shows the type of high level maturity assessment generated.,  The 8 areas in the Oracle SOA Model with their definitions are

• Business & Strategy
• Contains capabilities that provide the high-level constructs that allow the SOA initiative to proceed. This includes such things as business motivation, expected benefits, guiding principles, expected costs, funding model, etc.
• Architecture
• Contains capabilities concerning the definitions of the overall architecture and guidelines for various practitioners to ensure adherence to the architecture.
• Infrastructure
• Contains capabilities concerning the service infrastructure and tools that provide the technical foundation for the SOA initiative.
• Information
• Contains capabilities concerning the information aspects of SOA, e.g., providing Information as a Service (IAAS). This includes shared data models, message formats and schemas, master data management, content management, etc.
• Projects, Portfolios & Services
• Contains capabilities concerning the planning and building of services and the service usage guidelines of service consumers.
• Operations, Administration & Management
• Contains capabilities concerning the post deployment aspects of solutions based on a service-oriented architecture.
• Organization
• Contains capabilities concerning the development of corporate competency around SOA including the organizational structure and skills development.
• Governance
• Contains capabilities concerning the governance structures and processes that support and guide the SOA efforts. Maturity and adoption of adequate amount of governance is a leading indicator of the overall SOA success.

Remember that one of goals of a SOA Strategy is to identify the level of maturity required in each area.  Not every organization requires the highest levels to get the best value out of SOA.  For example an organization with a small service estate and correspondingly small focused projects does not require a large SOA governance infrastructure.  I’m interested to hear what people think about the assessment tool which now joins Oracles BPM assessment tool.