I realize I might take some heat from a few Cloud pundits for comparing admittedly disparate items in this new article in Database Trends & Analysis: "The Future of Cloud Computing is the Recent Past of SOA for the Software Lifecycle".
As the hype around SOA faded
into the overall idea of enterprise architecture, and Virtualization
became a standard procedure for saving costs, Cloud Computing became the Next Big Thing for IT. (Somewhere, a self-described Cloud Expert is groaning while reading this sentence and getting ready to blast it on Twitter...)
The ability to provision a complete solution, and scale it on a pay-as-you-need basis on Cloud-based systems is very appealing. However, Cloud Computing faces an often unfounded lack of Trust - one that has nothing to do with the viability of well-designed and managed software, whether or not it resides within a company's datacenter.
So now, let's compare it to the recent past of SOA, which is well beyond it's "Wild West" days of a bunch of loosely assembled services that weren't appropriately governed or tested. Even 2 or 3 years ago, we found people asking very similar questions about trusting SOA. Now? It's quietly become a common strategy for integration in the enterprise.
I'm just saying, there will be a day, not so far in the future, when IT collectively wakes up, rubs its eyes and realizes almost everything has become some sort of Cloud Computing, some combination of Public and Private clouds. The concerns we hear today about trusting the Cloud will again fade into trusting applications in general: Are they well-designed and implemented with appropriate security?
And we can move on to worry about the Next Big Thing.
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