If your business technology is service oriented, you may already be light years ahead of other organizations in preparing for a move to the cloud. SOA-aware services already have the systems independence and reusability that will help put the cloud pieces together.
That's the view of Forrester analyst James Staten, who recently issued a report, along with other colleagues, on what to do and what not to do when it comes to cloud computing. One key takeaway is that the work that went into service oriented architecture could pave the way to smoother cloud adoption. "Revisit your old SOA enterprise architectures — they’re relevant again," Staten advises.
The major difference is that cloud applications leverage REST versus SOAP web services. But "leading cloud-native services are built using SOA-class designs — as a series of interconnected but discrete services. They are designed for survivability of the infrastructure failure and have independence of locality. They are also designed for rapid innovation and iteration. It also reduces risk of incompatibility when new enhancements are delivered as system updates." All familiar territory for SOA practitioners.
Staten provides these additional pieces of advice:
(Photo: Joe McKendrick.)