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

It’s All about the Business 79
4. The amount of money, if any, that can be saved using these improvements.
5. Soft benefits.
6. Hard benefits.
7. Holistic impact on the business, good and bad.
8. Final proposed budget.
9. Suggestions for moving forward, or the ability for the SOA using cloud
computing to benefit the business, or not.
It’s All about the Business
While few will dispute the business value of SOA using cloud computing,
there is always a need to create a business case that defines the value for a
specific business. In most cases, you will find that cloud computing has a
clear business value, but there are those cases where it does not, and thus it
should not be used. You will not know until you define the business case and
run the numbers.
One thing to keep in mind is that cloud computing is not free, and you
have to consider the impact on IT holistically. Watch out for what is called
the manage-by-magazine effect, where cloud computing is so much a part of
popular thinking around computing that you are not objective. It is okay to
say no to cloud computing if there is no clear business benefit. Also, cloud
computing is clearly an architectural option for SOA. While you can do SOA
without cloud computing, you cannot do cloud computing without SOA.
Keep that in mind.
What is going to be difficult is creating business cases as the world of
cloud computing continues to emerge. Simply put, we just do not know
enough about cloud computing’s long-term operational value or many of the
pitfalls that may arise, since most of the public cloud computing providers
that we are likely to leverage have not been around for all that long. You always
need to consider this as a learning process, and make sure to look at the
current state-of-the-art while leveraging the guidelines we put forth in this
book. The technology will constantly change. The architecture should be relatively
stable.
On the upside, we have a clear opportunity to change the way we do IT
to have a more positive influence on the business when leveraging an SOA
using cloud computing. No longer will IT be a drain on company resources,