Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been around for close to a decade now & the Cloud Computing concept is rapidly rising on its hype curve. However, as many experts suggest, SOA & Cloud Computing are complementary, not competitive & a marriage between the two would be inevitable & beneficial.
We know that cloud computing has the ability to provide IT resources over the Internet. These resources include storage, database, Compute cycles, platform services, software service & many more, which can be found on the Internet and delivered as a service. One analogy to describe cloud computing is buying versus renting a house. The first option is similar to the traditional model of buying software requiring a large, upfront payment to cover the cost of the purchase and then running it on hardware that is again, bought or owned. The second option is similar to running software on-demand on leased hardware. While the end-result of living in a house is the same, the means to acquiring it are different.
With SOA, a common set of services among enterprise applications invites reusability and significantly reduces the need for building new application services.
Commenting on the synergies, Ashwin Krishna, COO Torry Harris Business Solutions, says “The spotlight today is on enterprises that have previously adopted SOA & how they can further add value, by adopting the cloud model. The Software delivered as a Service from cloud (SaaS) could be dished out using a fully fledged SOA stack. SOA-enabled SaaS providers can serve thousands or even tens of thousands of customers out of the same instance of the application.”
Ashwin’s views are complemented by Karthik, who heads the Centre of Excellence (CoE) for SOA and Cloud computing in Torry Harris. Says Karthik, “Clearly, SOA and cloud computing go hand in hand. The Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud model can be leveraged to accommodate and scale based on spikes in application usage or to better the performance of SOA services. Their strengths could be leveraged in combination to provide a powerful solution to enterprises.”
The intersection of SOA & Cloud forms a potent solution that allows businesses to handle the combination of service and application complexity, and balance it with cost effectiveness. Enterprises taking benefit of this combination are gearing up to the competitive advantage for the future.
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