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Cloud vs SOA

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Friday, 28 August 2009 03:24
Blogger: Anne Thomas Manes Joe McKendrick posted an article yesterday entitled, "Cloud: the SOA we always wanted, but never had?" He's reporting on a panel discussion he had with Phil Wainewright, Ed Horst, and David Bressler. Typically I tend to...

Blogger: Anne Thomas Manes

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Joe McKendrick posted an article yesterday entitled, "Cloud: the SOA we always wanted, but never had?" He's reporting on a panel discussion he had with Phil Wainewright, Ed Horst, and David Bressler.

Typically I tend to agree with Joe, but not so much this time. I'm more aligned with Mike Kavis on this one.

Mike expressed his distaste for the article in the following Tweet:

@madgreek65 I read this again http://tinyurl.com/mjnar6  Started a comment, then a blog post, then said forget it.  Too much wrong in that post.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Joe's article is completely wrong. For example, it asserts in the opening paragraphs:

"The consensus seemed to be that cloud is helping to boost the advantages promised by service orientation to a firmer business footing."

I certainly agree with this point, but the article quickly takes a left turn into hyperbole land when it asserts the following:

  • Cloud (as SOA should be) is well understood, and often demanded, by the business
  • Cloud (as SOA should be) is platform, language, and technology agnostic
  • Cloud (as SOA should) provides greater visibility and transparency to actual IT costs
  • Cloud (as SOA should) necessitates binding contracts between service providers and consumers
  • Cloud (as SOA should be) is based on trust between service providers and consumers
  • Cloud (as SOA should) originates from business requirements

As far as I can tell, cloud computing *is* none of these things. It *should* be. But cloud is too nascent for such assertions. Besides, in order to achieve these characteristics in cloud-based systems, organizations have to 1- design them that way, and 2- develop the contracts and trust described. You won't achieve these characteristics automagically just by deploying a system to EC2, Force.com, or some other cloud provider.


Posted: 2009-08-28 10:24:50

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Author:Anne Thomas Manes

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