Gartner: You want cloud? You need SOA first

In a new report, Gartner analyst Yefim Natis is quoted as saying that the success of cloud computing hinges on having good service oriented architecture underneath. “Prepare for the cloud by developing SOA skills,” Natis says. "The arrival of cloud as an option for the delivery of business applications could finally cement SOA into the IT mainstream," he adds.

Natis urges enterprise IT shops to continue investing in service-oriented architecture skills and initiatives if they are to be able to take full advantage of the emergence of the cloud infrastructure. SOA may eventually become the standard way by which applications are accessed through a cloud service, he adds. This will also propel adoption of private clouds, contained with the firewall.

We've been banging the SOA-Cloud drum for years here at this blogspot (e.g., here in 2005; here, here, and here in 2007), and it's good to see respected analysts also taking up the theme. SOA is evolving into the underlying enabler for private clouds, to the point where they almost can be considered one in the same. SOA has often been a tough sell. The good news is that the business readily grasps -- and even likes -- the idea of private and public clouds as a way to better organize and manage computing resources.