Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step ...

Storage-as-a-Service 39
move through the next several chapters where we talk about how to morph
your enterprise architecture through SOA using cloud computing to make
your IT infrastructure more effective and better aligned with the business. Expect
to refer back to this chapter from time to time as you go through the book.
Storage-as-a-Service
Storage-as-a-service, as you may expect, is the ability to leverage storage that
physically exists remotely but is logically a local storage resource to any application
that requires storage (see Figure 3.2). This is the most primitive component
of cloud computing and is leveraged by most of the other cloud
computing components.
Using a disk that you access over the Internet is a bit illogical at first.
When you think about it, why would some enterprise leverage storage that
exists thousands of miles away, as a service, when disk space is so cheap and
getting cheaper
Enterprise Application
Local Storage
Internet
Storage-as-a-Service
Provider
Remote Storage
Remote Storage
Figure 3.2 Storage-as-a-service allows you to store information on a remote disk
drive as if it were local.