<<Lori MacVittie recently channeled Gartner's Daryl "G-Man" Plummer
<http://blogs.gartner.com/daryl_plummer/> in an analysis of the
converging roles of SOA and cloud computing
<http://oracle.sys-con.com/node/910649>.
Essentially, the challenge with cloud computing comes along when you
want to move workloads in and out of the cloud, versus entire
applications. And Lori and Daryl are very careful to emphasis that point
--- that many enterprises may not want entire applications moved into
the cloud. Pieces are fine. The preferred approach for many
organizations seeking the most robust and cost-effective solutions may
be hybrid arrangements of clouds and on-premise data centers.
Lori defines a "workload" as a "discrete block of application logic that
is self-contained, and can be executed on its own" --- such as a
function, method, or Web service. The problem the cloud has it that it
was never designed to assist in decomposition of monolithic applications
into composite processes --- "it was designed, for the most part, to run
applications," she says.
So here's the challenge and here's where SOA comes into the picture:
"In order to move a "workload" into the cloud you have to decouple
it from the application; you have to use the basic principles
associated with SOA and decompose the application into its composite
processes such that you can distribute those processes in a way that
most effectively utilizes the processing power at hand -- whether
that's locally or in the cloud. You can't simply move a monolithic
application into the cloud and expect the cloud provider to be able
to dig into it and optimize the execution of specific processes. It
just isn't that smart."
The whole point of SOA, Lori reminds us, is to decompose applications
into discrete services so they can be distributed intelligently. "If one
service is reused by multiple business processes it can be replicated or
moved into the cloud so that it scales appropriately to meet the demands
that are placed upon it by other applications."
SOA was conceived and designed to enable the deployment and consumption
of services anywhere, anytime, inside or outside the firewall. Sounds
pretty cloudish to me.>>
You can read this at:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=2072
Gervas
