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

When Cloud Computing Fits 189
tions of the business, and thus you are ready to look at cloud computing.
This is a bit of a sidetrack when looking at the architectural components of
services, processes, and data as candidates for cloud computing, but it is
nonetheless important when you consider that you should not replatform an
architecture to or build new applications on cloud computing platforms unless
you have healthy enterprise architecture.
Those looking to fix bad enterprise architecture simply by relocating
portions of it to cloud computing platforms will find they only make their
issues worse. When looking to leverage cloud computing, you should first
have your house in good order, meaning that the internal architecture is in a
good optimal state. In many instances, architects view cloud computing as a
“quick fix” for architectural issues, and it actually makes things more complex
and difficult to manage, and it increases the likelihood of business systems
failure.
When the Browser Is the Desired User Interface
When the browser is the desired user interface means many cloud computingbased
systems, such as infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service,
leverage browser-based interfaces as the preferred mechanism to interact
with a user. These days, most browser-based applications are rich Internet
applications (RIAs; see Book Blog) and have the ability to behave and appear
native despite running within a browser.
The line between on-premise browser-based applications and clouddelivered
browser-based applications is pretty blurry right now, so there is a
lot to think about here. We are simply making the case that if the application
lives in a browser, which many already do, then cloud computing has some
additional benefits.
Cloud computing applications leverage Web-based interfaces because
they are serving up applications over the Internet that support platform independence
by leveraging the browser as the common denominator. However,
in some cases, end users want to leverage the native user interfaces,
such as Windows or Mac, and do not want to leverage a browser. With the
advent of RIA and the pervasive use of the browser as the common user interface,
native user interfaces are not as likely to be widely available in the
clouds.