Is there any difference between SOA and the cloud?
January 23, 2012
Grazed from FierceCIO. Author: Carolyn Carlson.
Service oriented architecture and cloud computing both offer access to applications by way of standard, reusable services, and they both provide hardware independence, location transparency and a chargeback system. Proponents of each might maintain that they are different things, but SOA appears to be transitioning into the cloud, writes Joe McKendrick at ZDNet.
Successful cloud deployment requires an enterprise-wide SOA strategy, according to E.G. Nadhan, who offers five signs revealing the cloud as an extension of SOA…
- Infrastructure as a service is a vital part of the cloud, and enterprises deploying an SOA strategy set the stage for dealing with infrastructure components provided as services.
- With SOA came the convenience of location transparency, and the cloud expands this notion, taking advantage of resources as needed.
- SOA addressed virtualization, and the cloud builds upon the concept, making it easier to provision infrastructure components quickly.
- With cloud computing even less hardware is needed, as a pool of gear is shared by multiple applications.
- SOA services required the development of metering and chargeback systems, which are now being used by cloud providers.