SOA technical architecture governance - evaluating maturity of standards

Technical standards, when they are successful, provide portability and interoperability between products, create 3^rd party markets, enhance competition, lower price and simplify integration. On the other hand, when a standard is adopted that fails, or ju=st fails to catch on, the cost and time for the inevitable reengineering can be devastating for the adopters and cause overall confusion and concern in the marketplace. While this is a problem for all of IT, SOA standards present unique challenges due to their rate of change and the industry-wide drive toward SOA. This paper will present a Standards Maturity Model (SMM) to serve as a guide for evaluating standards, assessing risk, and making plans for adoption. This model embraces the concept that a standard cannot be judged independent of the products supporting it, and the organization that publishes it.