SOA

Forget Defining Cloud Computing

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:45:00 EST

Defining cloud computing has proven to be nearly impossible. Ask ten different people and you'll get ten different answers. Countless discussion groups, blogs, articles, etc. have attempted to give their own take on cloud computing, and all to no avail. The industry just can't agree on a common definition. With that in mind, perhaps it's time to move past trying to define the cloud and look into the common characteristics of such solutions. Many of us have heard or read about some of these cloud characteristics, so I thought I would offer up my top five cloud computing solution characteristics here.

Desperately Seeking SOA Business Cases

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST

Or, to rephrase that famous Kennedy quote, "ask not what SOA can do for you, but ask what you can do to improve your business!" This is a really important question because I believe that the person seeking this information is not alone in attempting to identify real value of investing in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The problem is that a properly done SOA should be unique to the mission, goals and processes of the organization making it of limited relative use to another organization. That is, SOA offers a framework for identifying, isolating, delivering and servicing a consumer need, and, while all businesses have some common aspects, the resulting business services should be unique to the needs of that business' consumers.

Please Don’t Let the Cloud Ruin SaaS

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EDT

Back in the old good days of enterprise software, we did not need to worry about our customers. We delivered bits on DVDs – it was up to the customers to struggle with installation, integration, management, customization and other aspects of software operations. We collected all the cash upfront, took another 25% in annual maintenance. [...]

Cloud Computing Best Practices

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:45:00 EDT

Some of the key things to think about when putting your application on the cloud are discussed below. Cloud computing is relatively new, and best practice is still being established. However we can learn from earlier technologies and concepts such as utility compute, SaaS, outsourcing and even internal enterprise centre management, as well as from experience with vendors such as Amazon and FlexiScale.

Licensing: If you are using the cloud for spikes or overspill make sure that the products you want to use in the cloud can be used in this way. Certain products restrict their licenses to be used from a cloud perspective. This is especially true of commercial Grid, HPC or DataGrid vendors.

Data transfer costs: When using a provider like Amazon with a detailed cost model, make sure that any data transfers are internal to the provider network rather than external. In the case of Amazon, internal traffic is free but you will be charged for any traffic over the external IP addresses.

Latency: If you have low latency requirements then the Cloud may not be the best environment to achieve this. If you are trying to run an ERP or some such system in the cloud then the latency may be good enough but if you are trying to run a binary or FX Exchange then of course the latency requirements are very different and more stringent. It is essential to make sure you understand the performance requirements of your application and have a clear understanding of what is deemed business critical.

One vendor who has focused on attacking low latency in the cloud is GigaSpaces and so if you require cloud low latency then these are one of the companies you should evaluate. Also for processing distributed data loads there is the map reduce pattern and Hadoop. These type of architectures eliminating the boundaries created by scale-out database based approaches.

State: Check whether your cloud infrastructure providers have persistence. When an application is brought down and then back up all local changes will be wiped and you start with a blank slate. This obviously has ramifications with instances that need to store user or application state. To combat this on their platform Amazon delivered EC2 persistent storage in which data can remain linked to a specific computing instance. You should ensure you understand the state limitations of any Cloud Computing platform that you work with.

Data Regulations: If you are storing data in the cloud you may be breaching data laws depending where your data is stored i.e. which country or continent. To combat this Amazon S3 now supports location constraints, which allow you to specify where in the world to store data for a bucket and provides a new API to retrieve the location constraint for an existing bucket. However if you are using another cloud provider you should check where your data is stored.

Dependencies: Be aware of dependencies of service providers. If service ‘y’ is dependant on ‘x’ then if you subscribe to service ‘y’ and service ‘x’ goes down you lose your service. Always check any dependencies when you are using a cloud service.

Standardisation: A major issue with current cloud computing platforms is that there is no standardisation of the APIs and platform technologies that underpin the services provided. Although this represents a lack of maturity you need to consider how locked in you are when considering a Cloud platform or migrating between cloud computing platforms will be very difficult if not impossible. This may not be an issue if your supplier is IBM and always likely to be IBM, but it will be an issue if you are just dipping your toe in the water and discover that other platforms are better suited to your needs.

Security: Lack of security or apparent lack of security is one of the perceived major drawbacks of working with Cloud platform and Cloud technology. When moving sensitive data about or storing it in public cloud it should be encrypted. And it is important to consider a secure ID mechanism for authentication and authorisation for services. As with normal enterprise infrastructures only open the ports needed and consider installing a host based intrusion detection systems such as OSSEC. The advantage of working with an enterprise Cloud provider, such as IBM or Sun is that many of these security optimisations are already taken care of. See our prior blog entry for securing n-tier and distributed applications on the cloud. Be sure to check out Amazon’s new VPC inititative as well as looking at VPN-Cubed by CohesiveFT if you have to tie together public Clouds with private applications, services or infrastructure. If you need to keep costs down and evaluate free then look at OpenVPN.

Compliance: Regulatory controls mean that certain applications may not be able to deployed in the Cloud. For example the US Patriot Act could have very serious consequences for non-US firms considering U.S. hosted cloud providers. Be aware that often cloud computing platforms are made up of components from a variety of vendors who may themselves provide computing in a variety of legal jurisdictions. Be very aware of the dependencies and ensure you factor this into any operational risk management assessment. See also my prior blog entry on this topic

Quality of service: You will need to ensure that the behaviour and effectiveness of the cloud application that you implement can be measured and tracked both to meet existing or new Service Level agreements. We have discussed previously some of the tools that come with this option built in (GigaSpaces) and other tools that provide functionality that enable you to use this with your Cloud Architecture (RightScale, Scalr etc). Achieving Quality of Service will encompass scaling, reliability, service fluidity, monitoring, management and system performance.

System hardening: Like all enterprise application infrastructures you need to harden the system so that it is secure, robust, and achieves the necessary functional requirements that you need. See my prior blog entry on system hardening for Amazon EC2.

Content adapted from my book “TheSavvyGuideTo HPC, Grid, DataGrid, Virtualisation and Cloud Computing” available on Amazon.

An Application-Centric View of Cloud Computing

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:45:00 EDT

A recent survey from F5 indicates that the cloud computing movement is making significant headway despite what some may see as mere fluff and hype. The survey comprised of employees from large enterprises (2500+ employees), indicated that 82% of respondents are in some stage of public cloud use/trial and that 83% were in some stage of private cloud use/trial. Apparently, at least for the respondents in this survey, cloud computing has officially arrived.

Is Your SOA Hammer Looking for a Nail?

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:30:00 EDT

ZapThink considers the SOA business case as an essential SOA artifact. Architects must have a clear picture of the business motivations for SOA, not only at the beginning of the initiative, but also as the architecture rolls out. Nevertheless, there is still frequently a disconnect between the business problems and the SOA approach. The challenge here is that the architects -- or more broadly, the entire SOA team -- are only one part of the bigger picture, especially in large organizations. In the enterprise context, how the business asks for IT capabilities in the broad sense is often at the root of the issue.

When SOA Fails, Just SCA

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:15:00 EDT

So, in this morning’s email I received a notification from ActiveVOS that their CTO is a primary contributor to a new book recently released on Service Component Architecture (SCA). Having just recently completed a full investigation into SCA, two things jumped out at me: 1) SCA is heavily being driven by the vendor community and 2) SCA breaks many of the rules of SOA that have been touted by these same vendors for the past 6 years. For example, SCA rewards an implied contract versus a contract-first approach to service development. That is, the contract is derived from the programming model versus defined by the architects.

SOA in the Cloud: The Cloud of Services

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:15:00 EDT

This is a blog about the importance of cloud solutions that are organized as services. As more and more cloud computing offerings hit the market, I think it is becoming increasingly important that users understand what to look for in such solutions. It is one thing to provide something called a cloud solution, but it is quite another to do so in a way that delivers the most value, flexibility, and agility to its users. However with so many different cloud solutions and vendors out there, what should users really be looking for?

Bringing Cloud Computing to SOA

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EDT

There’s no shortage of opinions on how cloud computing and SOA are related. Just plug the phrase into your favorite search engine and you’ll have a day’s worth of reading. What you are likely to find are articles discussing how SOA led to cloud computing, how a good SOA is a prerequisite to leverage cloud computing, or how to leverage cloud computing in your SOA.

Finding New Life For SOA in the Cloud

Thu, 28 May 2009 07:45:00 EDT

We’ve been having quite a few discussions with analysts over the past few months on the subject of “cloud”. The interesting thing about these discussions is the vast array of points of view from which those analysts are viewing “cloud”. Some are focused on the network aspects, others on pricing/differentiation, and some are even very focused on what “cloud” means to applications – and the organizations that will, allegedly, take advantage of the cloud as a means of application deployment. One such analyst is Daryl Plummer of Gartner. Daryl has always been very application focused so it’s always a pleasure to speak with him and, of late, read what he has to say via his blog. (Daryl is also a cartoonist, and has turned his interests in that area on the cloud, resulting in “G-Men”. If you haven’t yet, take a gander. He’s quite talented.) The last time we spoke to Daryl he asked “What can you do to help an organization move a monolithic application into the cloud?” That’s a fairly straightforward answer for F5, unless you specify that the organization wants to move workload into the cloud, not necessarily the entire application.

Data.gov Will Redefine Data-as-a-Service

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:00:00 EDT

I’ve been in several meetings recently that have hit on the topic of Data.gov. Data.gov will become a repository for all the information the government collects, and that information will be in turn available to anyone who needs it. Pretty positive move, if you ask me. However, the existing data-as-a-service providers that traffic in government data could find that they are soon suffering from relevancy problems.

McKinsey Got It Wrong: Cloud Computing is for Enterprises

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:00:00 EDT

McKinsey announced a report on Cloud computing, claiming that the economics only made sense for small and medium sized companies but not for enterprises with their own data centers. The analysis then compared the cost of using Amazon's service with the cost of a typical data center. McKinsey also assunmed that the firm would move all of its computing to the cloud -- we don't know of any organizations that plan to do that.

The Value of Inter-Domain Infrastructure Technology for SOA

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:15:00 EST

As SOA moves from the project level to the enterprise, SOA architects and practitioners quickly realize the need to consider common services and data management issues. Today we seek the right approaches and the proper enabling technology and standards to provide our enterprises with a common scalable and secure mechanism that ensures all instances of SOAs within the enterprise have the technology-independent infrastructure they need in support of the business.

ZSL Launches Enterprise 2.0 Computing Framework Built on IBM WebSphere sMash

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:15:00 EDT

ZSL announced its Enterprise 2.0 Computing Framework built on IBM WebSphere sMash and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). ZSL's new Enterprise 2.0 computing framework offerings will enable businesses to protect core legacy system investments while leveraging cutting-edge tools and development languages to streamline programming, processing, enhancements, and integration of new applications.

IBM's WebSphere Virtual Enterprise to Manage Software Applications and SOA Environments

Thu, 29 May 2008 14:00:00 EDT

IBM announced that businesses are taking advantage of WebSphere Virtual Enterprise to manage software applications and service oriented architecture (SOA) environments with minimal human interaction. The software increases application performance and lowers operational and energy costs required to create, run, and manage applications across an enterprise.

Testing SOA Solutions

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 10:15:00 EST

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been discussed as an important architectural style for the last few years. Organizations have started to develop service-oriented solutions and many are now leveraging services in their production environments. SOA introduces new technical complexities and challenges and makes testing a critical component of the development lifecycle.

The Challenges of SOA

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:00:00 EDT

'Our processes are bulletproof. Nothing gets into production that doesn't go through the proper and complete approval process.' Famous last words uttered by far too many enterprise architects. Some of them actually believe it's true - others think that by hoping it's true, maybe, just maybe, they can make it true.The reality, as any line-of-business developer can attest, is much less clear-cut. The challenge is that governance only gets harder the more an organization moves towards a service-based architecture.

Combining SOA and Event-Driven Architecture Using an Enterprise Service Bus

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:45:00 EDT

To be able to adapt to market changes, organizations tend to focus on flexibility and responsiveness. The IT challenge has usually been to support this business vision with the appropriate architectures and technologies.

Building a Powerful, Reliable SOA with JMS and WebSphere ESB

Thu, 18 May 2006 12:15:00 EDT

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is never established in a vacuum. In any real life situation, an existing IT environment must be taken into consideration, offering functionality -- and data -- that cannot simply be replaced by a set of new services. Hence, a key aspect of building an SOA is to decompose existing applications into smaller blocks (that is, the 'services') that communicate over standard protocols and have well-defined interfaces. The advantage of this is that such environments are more flexible, without tight coupling between various parts of the overall system.

Building SOA Solutions with Service Component Architecture

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 09:45:00 EST

In the previous article (part 1 in WebSphere Journal vol: 3. iss: 4) we began to build an SCA project in WebSphere Process Server. Here in part 2 we pick up the discussion. To see the associated images, please view the article online at www.ibm.com/developerWorks/websphere.

SOA Antipatterns

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 17:00:00 EST

Explore different Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) antipatterns, which are descriptions of commonly occurring situations or solutions that generate decidedly negative consequences. With more businesses taking major steps to move from Web services to SOA, barriers to the introduction, adoption, and successful implementations of SOA are becoming more evident. Some of these barriers are similar to those that caused past essential initiatives to fail; others are specific to SOA.

Building SOA Solutions with SCA - Service Component Architecture

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 09:00:00 EST

You may be thinking, oh great, not another programming model. What about Web services? What happened to Enterprise JavaBeans? Well, Service Component Architecture (SCA) is not meant to replace or compete with any existing programming models. Instead, SCA gives you a model to define interfaces, implementations, and references in a technology neutral way, letting you then bind these elements to whichever technology specific implementations you choose.

SOA Project Planning Aspects

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:30:00 EST

The architectural consideration of SOA in the preceding chapter offers advice on what directions to choose and how to define the strategic goals for an SOA project. This chapter takes the next step toward execution by focusing on how to plan an SOA project. The topics in this chapter constitute the best practices we have uncovered for forming a project office (see Section 4.1), how to define the phases of SOA adoption, the need for and mechanisms of SOA governance, and finally, the various project roles and how they interact with each other.

IBM WebSphere SOA Framework and Java J2EE Web Services

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 12:15:00 EST

The WebSphere Integration Reference Architecture rigorously recognizes the need for a comprehensive software development platform as core. It's important that the development platform encompasses the entire lifecycle of software development, including requirements analysis, modeling and design, component development, testing, and code maintenance. The tooling must be compatible with the concepts of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and support the use of the best practices emerging via Service-Oriented Modeling and Architecture (SOMA) and Service Oriented Development of Applications (SODA) methodologies. These characteristics are incumbent on the IBM software development platform.

The Importance of Industry Standards

Mon, 16 May 2005 15:00:00 EDT

Hundreds of new industry-specific mandates, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and privacy requirements based on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, are either in place now or scheduled to take effect in the near future. While complying with these mandates may seem daunting, businesses actually now have an opportunity to make improvements that go beyond mere compliance to increase the efficiency and predictability of their operations.

How to Identify, Specify, and Realize Services for Your SOA

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST

There has been a lot of buzz and hype, some factual, some not so well-founded, surrounding the opportunities presented by Service-oriented Architectures (SOA) and their implementation as Web services. Analysts have predicted, pundits have professed, professors have lectured. And companies have scurried to sell what they had as SOA products, often missing the point that SOA is not a product.

From Blueprint to Skyscraper

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 00:00:00 EST

As many people correctly predicted, Web services and their corresponding service-oriented architecture (SOA) have proven their promise. Companies and businesses are starting to not only integrate new components and technologies, but are also opening up back-end systems and legacy processes.

Delivering Applications on Demand in SOA Environments

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Application developers have always been under pressure to develop applications faster, with fewer resources. Recently, this has directed attention to service-oriented architectures (SOAs) because of their promise to provide libraries of reusable services that can be snapped together easily when needed.