Analysts: Cloud computing means new role for service registries

Ed Vazquez, reporting from the recent Gartner confab in Orlando, surfaced a discussion on the evolving role of service registries in the emerging cloud computing paradigm.

Cloud computing accelerates 'search' aspect of registries

That is, registries and repositories have been the center of attention for the past few years as service-oriented architectures have spilled over into the mainstream. They have served as internal enterprise directories and clearinghouses for services coming online that met the criteria for snapping into the SOA infrastructure.

However, what should we do about all those services that may soon be coming out of the cloud, from outside the enterprise walls? What role will registries/repositories play?

Analysts David Cearley and David Mitchell Smith explored the new route registries and repositories may be taking, which will be more in the context of search. Namely, that "services provided in the cloud by vendors and partners are required to be discoverable," Vazquez related.

The classic "1.0" registry that we know and are trying to love has been company-specific, managed by enterprise IT departments. The new registry may be part of the cloud itself, managing services from multiple locations anywhere across the globe. As Vazquez put it: "Indeed, the services’ location independence, afforded by properly designed SOA and deployed enabling technologies, makes it irrelevant to service consumers where the services are hosted, along with the other internal details of their delivery."

Ironically, this sounds awfully close to the vision for the original public UDDI registries, which were scrapped a couple of years back. But ultimately, SOA will build upon services that traverse enterprise walls, and these services need to be addressed through some type of governance (or service lifecycle management) mechanisms.

As frequently noted over the years at this blogsite, enterprises are evolving into both providers and consumers of services -- and the emergence of cloud computing is greatly accelerating this trend. This was also the recurring theme at the Gartner conference, and as Ed Vazquez observed: "Leaving other implications aside for now, metadata publishing and SLA compliance are among the concerns that require a deliberate metadata management architecture."