IBM Global Services published a SOA governance methodology in September, and many months ago both BEA and Sun Microsystems launched SOA readiness assessments to see how far down the SOA path customers really are. However, Sonic claimed its Maturity Model is not intended to be prescriptive, but to offer IT practitioners a framework for discussion of their SOA plans.

According to Sonic, it could also help IT to demonstrate the value of SOA to the business, and act as a tool to help the company build a roadmap for what they need to do next on the journey to SOA.

The model is said to be complementary to the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), indeed like CMMI. The SOA Maturity Model has five levels, with the characterizations of levels 2-5 using almost identical terminology.

Level 1, called Initial Services, is the point where software development teams are piloting the first services. Level 2, Architected Services, is the point where SOA architecture is defined. Level 3 is the point where business processes are automated as services, while Level 4, Measured Business Services, is where business services are measured for their impact on the bottom line.

Intended for the CFO, the benefit is the ability for the organization to make real-time decisions on where to invest when it comes to deploying new services or retiring existing ones.

The final level, Optimization, is the point where processes are fully automated and dynamic. For instance, if a mass retailer of computers has a build-up of an 80-Byte hard drive, an inventory update service automatically triggers sales and promotions to highlight that drive when prospective customers log onto the site.

The model will be presented in late October in the shape of a white paper, backed up by a 10-city management forum series that kicked off on September 20, 2005 and concludes on October 13, 2005.

Sonic, most famous for its Enterprise Service Bus product, which is said to act as the foundation of SOA, also talked about the value of integrating its ESB with the complex event processing tool that Sonic parent Progress Software acquired when it bought privately-held Apama in April this year. That integration helps companies as they get to levels 4 and 5 in the Maturity Model, as it can enable them to analyze vast streams of data in real-time, looking for specific events and triggering business rules when those events are discovered.