The technologies and ideas behind Cloud Computing and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) are not new, in spite of what the hype cycles might say. In fact, both concepts have been with us for decades. A group of graduate students sharing time on a mainframe could be considered cloud computing. And SOA? Has anyone ever (purposefully) designed a disoriented architecture or not tried to tie business processes together in a meaningful manner?

Beyond these oversimplifications, the ideas of SOA and Cloud are powerful and still not fully utilized or understood, and both have been on a steep transition path over the past ten or 15 years. In addition, CIOs across industries continue to grapple with how they can improve their businesses by applying SOA and cloud computing.

Due to the state of IT and business today, the time has come for companies to fully embrace these concepts and realize both the economic and management benefits they bring. The two are also uniquely suited to one another, and we assert companies should look at these strategies in tandem.

Cloud computing can be viewed as a vast quilt on which any application can run, and SOA is the stitching that brings together the many applications and provides a common interface for your users. With SOA, information and applications are based on a common service layer, while the Cloud ensures those services are always on, interoperable and scalable.

Successful SOA must be cloud-based and successful use of cloud computing requires SOA.

The point of SOA is to make businesses more manageable, more flexible and more responsive to change. The promise of SOA is a smarter infrastructure, with less chaos and more control. The questions an inquisitive CEO will ask the SOA proponent are common ones: How will this effort improve our ability to service customers? How much will it cost? How will we fund it? What returns will this investment offer? How long will it take to implement? What are the security implications?

Each of these questions is now easier to answer due to the maturity of Cloud Computing and SOA.

There are three underlying factors that illustrate why Cloud Computing is a logical partner for SOA initiatives.

1.        The ability to deploy incrementally: One reason SOA has faltered at many companies is the challenge of determining how and where to start, and many IT groups attempt to bite off more than they can chew. The right way to approach SOA (and the cloud, frankly) is in phases.

This was a theme heard frequently during the recent Gartner (News - Alert) Summit on enterprise architecture and integration. Gartner analyst Paolo Malinverno and team emphasize this point, when they warn that “starting too big” is a common mistake companies make. “Because SOA is a long-term, complex initiative, enterprises should invest in developing the required understanding, best practices and organizational culture before committing to mission-critical SOA projects. Leaping into such a computing environment too fast is treacherous. Thus, gradual adoption is imperative for most enterprises.” ¹

Cloud Computing, especially when coupled with Software-as-a-Service, is an ideal way to scale slowly, starting small and growing as the plan and needs move forward. Leveraging cloud services, it’s possible to take an enterprise-wide view, lay out the architecture, and then strategically address business services one at a time rather than via a huge system overhaul, thus minimizing the political and economic negative impact.

Cloud solutions and services allow you to budget operationally rather than pulling from your shrinking capex budget. Plus, all this can be done with existing infrastructure. The resulting reduction in risk, the inherent cost-effectiveness and immediately apparent payback helps assuage C-level concerns.

2.        Business and IT Alignment and Collaboration: Another core SOA tenet is getting IT in-step with the line of business. Businesses are in flux and IT must be able to support any large corporate move; be it merger, acquisition or reorganization. IT must be flexible, must conform to myriad standards and must be transferable, either so it communicates with large customers or so it can work between new business partners.

This cross-enterprise integration applies SOA externally as well as internally, allowing each company to exchange information in their preferred format and method. This level of transparency and interoperability is now more easily achieved through the intrinsic heterogeneity of cloud computing. The loose coupling used in cloud-based SOA emphasizes commonalities, so application integration and b2b integration are more cost-effectively and quickly addressed. This gives IT greater agility, making them more responsive and able to positively impact the business.

For example, perhaps the first SOA initiative you take is with centralizing and streamlining the overall procurement process for your organization. This brings together multiple groups, applications, business processes and policies across the business. It most likely also requires the exchange of information and documents between your company and customers, suppliers and financial institutions. By creating a centralized SOA-based services layer and then leveraging cloud-based integration services, you can vastly improve the efficiencies and accuracy of your overall procurement operation, while reducing costs and manual intervention.

3.        IT can be open without sacrificing security.  Few IT managers, even network administrators, still believe in the fantasy of the castle and moat network architecture. With an increasingly mobile workforce, cloud-based solutions, outsourced operations and speed of business requirements, network security must also enable the fast access to information and people. The tendency to lock down corporate data may keep you secure, but it will also slow you down. In this economic era, businesses and IT operations must respond quickly.

Cloud-based solutions help you achieve that openness with proven security. While security issues have made headlines in 2009 with large cloud platforms, most cloud-based services are secure. The fact is people have been running cloud-based applications for more than a decade. The security model is mature, and there multiple compliance mandates, such as PCI and SAS (News - Alert) 70 that many cloud vendors adhere to.

That being said, don’t take security for granted. You should evaluate cloud vendors with the same strict security criteria you evaluate any IT vendor, and they should have clear answers around data protection and encryption (including data at rest), identity management, access control rules, physical security and compliance.

While SOA has not always been well-understood, it’s always been a good idea. Over the years, enterprise architecture has grown increasingly complex and distributed. Divorced from the strategic analysis of business processes, IT has drifted into a dangerous realm, where it is now often part of the problem rather than the solution.

SOA is designed to rectify this, by aligning systems with business process and bringing together disparate operations. With a phased approach and clear long-term plan, SOA will vastly improve business process management and automation, and enable IT to align with business priorities.

Matching SOA with the cloud will make implementing SOA easier, more cost-effective and scalable. The alternatives – a SOA initiative without the cloud or cloud computing without SOA – present multiple barriers to success.

By marrying SOA and Cloud Computing in your environment, you are bringing together two complementary and proven approaches that together will increase efficiencies and streamlines business processes. 

1  Gartner report: The 13 Most Common SOA Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. Paolo Malinverno, Yefim V. Natis, Massimo Pezzini, Timothy Weaver. Publication Date: 18 September 2009 ID Number: G00171104

As a vice president with IBM (News - Alert) WebSphere, Steven Worrall is responsible for the worldwide sales of WebSphere’s BPM, Connectivity and Commerce platforms. In this role Steven works with clients and IBM sales teams around the world to understand the business challenges companies are facing and to provide business solutions based on the WebSphere platform. Steven has worked for IBM for 17 years in a variety of roles, including General Manager of the IBM Software Group in Australia & New Zealand. Steven holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration.

Trisha Gross joined Hubspan in 2000 as a member of the executive leadership team. With more than 20 years experience in the technology and service industries, Trisha has a wealth of expertise in ERP and supply chain management, systems implementation consulting, client service and support, and cloud computing. Before joining Hubspan, Trisha held senior management positions at a number of growth-oriented software and technology companies, including Concur Technologies (News - Alert) and Lawson Software. Gross holds a BS in engineering from Michigan State University and a MBA from the University of Chicago.