The role of Service Level Agreements in Successful SOA Deployments

Making sure software-oriented architecture (SOA) applications live up to expectations takes more than hope and hype. It takes the right kind of SLA based on the right kinds of application performance metrics.
In this white paper, you’ll learn that discovering performance issues, determining the precise type and location of a problem as it occurs, and resolving problems fast regardless of their source and before customers notice performance fall-off – before SLAs are violated — requires a new kind of application performance management tool designed for SOA environments. Such a tool must be capable of:

• Monitoring the end-to-end response-times of SOA application transactions,
• Maintaining a deep understanding of SOA application performance beyond the limits of the application itself to determine why an SOA app isn’t performing and how that performance lapse affects shared components, services, etc.,
• Mapping dependencies and facilitating visibility into individual SOA application transactions as well as the app’s associated components, services, and connections,
• Ensuring SLA compliance via real-time 24x7 visibility into SOA app performance, including proactive warning of a slowdown or outage, and
• Reporting historically on individual application, services, components, connection behaviors and errors for capacity planning and to spot problem patterns.

If SOA service-level agreements are to be effective, IT operations staff needs the right kind of monitoring and measuring tools to cope with the new kinds of complexities posed by SOA’s loose coupling. SLA metrics can no longer be limited to a single application or component or service residing on a siloed server.