Change management, as it used to be called, or the new buzzword ‘governance’ is a key component of any SOA.

If we consider that one of the main benefits of SOA is reuse, this can sometimes only happen when slight modifications are made to a service to allow it to be used for a different purpose. The change will normally not impact on the previous use but to ensure reuse, the change must be made.

It is key that an existing, running service does not break so there must be different versions of a service available during the transition phase. However, once working, it is essential that the existing users of the old service are upgraded to avoid having to support multiple versions of the service. As such the usage of your services is key to this change management.

SOA Governance with the correct tools can be extremely helpful in upgrading services ensuring continued reused and deprecation of older copies of the service. There are two documents here which discuss how both life cycle and usage governance of your services can help your organization. These governance capabilities are all implemented in the SOA Gateway.