- How Things Got Off Track
- SOA to the Rescue?
- What the Heck Is SOA, and Why Should I Care?
- SOA Meets Cloud Computing
- Defining Cloud Computing
- The Components of Cloud Computing
- The Dream Team of Cloud Computing and SOA
- What SOA Can Learn from Cloud Computing
- What Cloud Computing Can Learn from SOA
- Making the Leap
- Being Positively Disruptive
What Cloud Computing Can Learn from SOA
Service Governance
There is little notion of governance today within cloud computing, and thus there is little control and implementation of policies. Therefore, many enterprises are not diving right into cloud computing.
Governance, while not always well implemented, is a fundamental fact of life with SOA. The ability to set policies around services and to manage changes to those services is a critical success factor. As we weave cloud computing–delivered services into applications and within our SOA, we will find that many things break as the on-demand services change over time. Typically, SOA can manage the changes through SOA governance systems, but perhaps some of that governance should originate with the services that come out of the clouds.
Driving from the Architecture
Doing SOA properly means driving SOA from the architecture to the technology. Within the world of cloud computing, the resources on demand are the starting point. With cloud computing, the need for a well-thought-out architecture is just as important as for traditional systems, considering that you are extending the architecture out of the firewall.
Using cloud computing resources is about extending your architecture out of the enterprise to incorporate cloud resources, and thus it is important to remember that your architecture does not end at the firewall. Understanding both the resources that exist within the enterprise and the resources that are cloud-delivered is even more critical, as is the need to configure these resources correctly in the context of an architecture and to meet the needs of the business.
Clearly, SOA and cloud computing go hand in hand. Cloud computing is just the ability to leverage new platforms and resources that you do not happen to own. Nothing really changes outside of that, including the need to do SOA right. However, cloud computing is accelerating the adoption of SOA by providing aspects of SOA on demand. SOA can learn a lot from the clouds, and the clouds can learn a lot from SOA. This book brings the two together.