SOA and cloud in the same basket: 'Service Technology'

Thomas Erl, who has done boundless work identifying key issues, attributes and solutions for service orientation and service oriented architecture, has arrived at a common identifier for both SOA and cloud computing: "service technology."

For the past two years, Thomas' annual gathering of SOA experts far and wide, the International SOA Symposium, has been co-located with the emerging International Cloud Symposium, with overlapping programs and sessions.

As explained in Thomas' latest book, SOA Governance: Governing Shared Services On-Premise and in the Cloud, the rise of cloud computing put SOA back in the spotlight -- "even organizations that shunned SOA now have one. It's called the cloud."

To this same end, Dave Linthicum has been telling us for years now that cloud computing should be a logical extension of SOA best practices.

Is it time to just bring it all -- SOA, Web services, cloud services -- under a common terminology and approach?

Accordingly, Thomas has repositioned his online publication, formerly called SOA Magazine, as Service Technology Magazine (www.servicetechmag.com).

As he explains it in his editorial:

"The SOA Magazine has been renamed to the Service Technology Magazine. Articles will of course continue to be focused on service-oriented architecture and service-orientation, but will also address topics related to service technology innovations, such as those fostered by the on-going emergence of cloud computing platforms. I'd like to invite you all to contribute your expertise as we continue to explore how this new generation of architectural models, paradigms, and technologies is changing the way we view and leverage IT."

We have SOA providing the architecture, governance and orchestration for services delivered through cloud mechanisms, both internally and externally across the Internet. Readers, is it time to tear down the separate SOA and cloud silos and start addressing service technology as one?