Cloud is the Platform for New Service Oriented Architecture
There was a time when some enterprise software developers envisioned a market where individual business users would not access specific applications or unique systems, but would interact with information and have tools available to address their specific functional or process requirements. Each user would have a system that allowed them to work in the context of their job function rather than operating in a system that provided more than they need to get their jobs done. While data may reside in different locations, the “framework” defined access and integration throughout the enterprise.
This concept is referred to as Service Oriented Architecture, and is defined by Wikipedia as “ a set of software engineering principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of interoperable services. These services are well-defined business functionalities that are built as software components (discrete pieces of code and/or data structures) that can be reused for different purposes.” All that sounds rather complicated, but the underlying principles are fairly simple: reuse information rather than re-creating it, and give people tools and information specifically designed to help them get their jobs done. SOA is about pulling the right data and functionality together to handle the various aspects of the business – in a context relevant to the user - and doing it in a way that brings cohesion to the entire solution.
The current shift in how businesses access and use computing and software resources has introduced new capability to small and medium businesses – capability which was once firmly ensconced in the enterprise computing domain. This new capability, the new service oriented architecture, is enabled with the cloud and the new generation of cloud solutions designed to meet the various needs of businesses of all sizes.
As the “cloud” has matured, the platform has delivered a great deal of value for business users in terms of subscription-based application services, data storage solutions, tools for communication and more. Recognizing that the “cloud” is really a platform, not a place or product, developers have created the capability for various cloud solutions to leverage the platform’s standardized methods and approaches to enable integration of data and functionality. Businesses no longer rely upon standalone applications and locked silos of data. Today’s businesses are coming to rely upon the ability to connect their solutions together, providing an approach to business computing similar to that vision of SOA, but affordable for even the smallest of businesses.
Make Sense?
J
