Where are the intersection points between cloud computing and SOA?

Cloud computing is gaining popularity, says Ben Pring, a senior analyst at Gartner. "It's becoming a popular word." "But the problem is that everyone seems to have a different understanding of cloud computing," he said. As a metaphor for the internet, "cloud" is easy to understand. But once associated with computing, its meaning expands and becomes blurred. Some analysts and companies have defined cloud computing only as an upgraded version of computing-basically the many virtual servers available on the Internet. Others have defined cloud computing more broadly, saying that everything consumers consume outside the firewall is in the cloud.

Cloud computing is a concern that people need to find a way to increase the capacity and capacity of the Internet without adding new investments, new human resources and new software, given what the IT industry really needs. And cloud computing provides that possibility. Today, cloud computing is at a start-up stage, with large and small companies offering a wide range of cloud computing services, from software applications to http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13684.html "> Network storage to mail filtering." These companies are part of the infrastructure provider and the other is SaaS (software as a service) provider like Salesforce.com. The main achievement today is internet-based personal services, but the aggregation and consolidation of cloud computing is emerging.

Cloud computing has become one of the hottest emerging technologies as companies become more concerned about cloud computing and companies that try to deploy cloud computing applications have risen sharply. The focus on SOA is no longer as strong as it used to be. In fact, there are many things that cloud providers SOA vendors can learn from each other.

First, I'll briefly introduce some of the benefits of cloud computing that deserve SOA lessons:

1. Service Design

Some vendors through cloud deployment services such as Amazon, Thewebservice, Force.com, and so on, have done quite well in service design. You can't help but be attracted to the services they offer, because careful design, coupled with the fact that it can satisfy your needs, makes you irresistible. Many SOA projects are either too rough or too cumbersome, and in a nutshell there is no good service design.

2. Service Extensibility

The purpose of cloud computing services is to be able to scale at any time you need, and cloud service users can do this because they can tailor the services they need at any time. Extending services in an SOA is often a painful and expensive process.

Next, let's take a look at some of the areas where SOA is worth using for cloud computing:

1. Service governance

For now, cloud computing technology has almost no governance concept, so there is little cloud control and execution strategy. Therefore, many companies choose to continue to wait and see attitude, and do not rush to adopt cloud computing technology. SOA, its governance technology is quite mature. Although the implementation of SOA governance does not always work very well, it has become an essential component of the SOA lifecycle.

2. Architecture driven

If you have a proper approach to SOA deployment, you must follow the driver approach from architecture to technology. In the field of cloud computing, resource demand is the real starting point. Cloud computing also requires a thoughtful architecture, in fact, architecture is more important to cloud computing because users need to extend the architecture beyond the firewall.

Where are the intersection points between cloud computing and SOA?

While it is true that you can take advantage of the cloud without deploying SOA, the real value of cloud computing is its ability to determine the services, data, and processes that exist outside the firewall in other data centers. Those who are trying to throw things into the clouds without any architectural foresight will find that cloud computing will not bring much value. In fact, you may be surprised when considering the risks and costs associated with migration.

In fact, you can view cloud computing as an extension of SOA cloud delivery resources, such as storage as a service, data as a service, platform as a service. The trick is to determine which services, information, and processes are the best candidates for the cloud, and which cloud services should be abstracted in existing or emerging SOA.

So, you can use the cloud as a platform for additional operations (simply placing) applications, processes. The advantage is that you don't need to have a server with rich software installed in the datacenter and hire some professionals to maintain it.

It is understandable, though, that corporate it is not very reassuring about cloud computing. But I think that once we allow the cloud to get more active space, many cloud computing resources can actually provide better services than out-of-the-way resources and facilities, including cost savings, increased efficiency, and access to thousands of dynamic Web publishing resources.

The interest in cloud computing will also greatly boost interest in SOA, not just as a mechanism to bring more reuse and flexibility, but also to enable users to figure out which resources should reside locally and which resources should be placed in the cloud.

A good SOA leads to a good cloud computing strategy that lowers costs and increases the flexibility of enterprise computing.