Finding the Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing

David Linthicum, SOA expert, blogger, and founder of Blue Mountain Labs, spoke on Finding the Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC.

Linthicum opened by sharing the distinctions and connections between SOA and cloud computing. SOA is something you do, an architectural pattern. Cloud computing is an architectural option.

The value of SOA comes from having an architecture that readily accommodates change. The more your business changes, the more SOA pays for itself. However, the initial build-out of SOA, prior to business change or service sharing, is cost-ineffective. By incorporating cloud computing in SOA, the time to value is shortened because you leverage ‘other people’s work’. The trick, Linthicum shares, is to determine which services, information, and processes are good candidates to reside in, come from, the clouds.

To determine the right mix of internal and external services for your SOA, Linthicum emphasizes starting with your architecture. Understand your business drivers, information under management, existing services under management and core business processes. A common failure pattern is jumping to the technology prior to understanding own issues.

Beyond understanding your issues, understand the state of cloud computing. While there are safe, reliable offerings, cloud computing is at an early stage. Linthicum warned attendees to factor in integration costs and to beware of cloud interoperability and portability limitations.

For organizations contemplating extending SOA to the cloud, Linthicum suggests three preparatory actions. First, accept the notion that it's okay to leverage external services as part of your SOA. Second, create a strategy for the consumption and management of cloud services. Third, create a proof of concept now.

Presentation Abstract:
While SOA and best practices provide a framework for approaching IT architecture for the enterprise, the use of cloud computing resources, in the context of SOA is where the real money is made. Indeed, SOA, while bringing agility to the IT systems, also prepares the enterprise to leverage cloud computing by creating the necessary interfaces and support of standards. This symbiotic relationship between the concepts is further able to drive the enterprise to a state where services and processes may be run inside or outside of the firewall, as required by the business. In essence extending your SOA out to the platform of the Web, where and when needed, to reduce costs and take advantage of Internet delivered resources that provide access to pre-built processes and services, as well as access to platforms delivered as-a-service, as well as the value of the expandability of cloud computing resources.

In this presentation Dave takes the mystery out of cloud computing, and its use within the context of SOA, including the business case, the core notion, enabling technology, enabling standards, best practices, and steps to get to where you need to go. This presentation is not about general concepts and hype, it’s about setting a course for your enterprise towards a more agile, powerful, efficient, and cost effective approach to IT that will allow the IT resources to scale on-demand, and at the same time reducing costs significantly. Dave will not only tell you what’s going on, but how to do it. Step by step.

About the Speaker:

David Linthicum, SOA expert, blogger, and founder of Blue Mountain Labs is an internationally known cloud computing and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) expert. In his career, Dave has formed or enhanced many of the ideas behind modern distributed computing including EAI, B2B Application Integration, and SOA, approaches and technologies in wide use today. For the last 10 years, Dave has focused on the technology and strategies around cloud computing, including working with several cloud computing startups. Dave’s industry experience includes tenure as CTO and CEO of several successful software companies, and upper-level management positions in Fortune 500 companies.

Dave focuses on best practices and the real business value of cloud computing, as well as the true fit of the technology within the context of enterprise requirements. His expertise lies in his ability to define where the business meets Cloud computing using familiar tools and understandable terminology.

In addition, Dave was an associate professor of computer science for eight years, and continues to lecture at major technical colleges and universities including the University of Virginia, Arizona State University, and the University of Wisconsin. Dave keynotes at many leading technology conferences on cloud computing, SOA, Web 2.0, and enterprise architecture, and has appeared on a number of TV and radio shows as a computing expert.

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