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

192 Chapter 10 Defining Candidate Data, Services, and Processes for the Clouds
This is great news for those of us who develop Web Services or implement
SOA on-premise or via cloud computing. With the use of RIAs, suddenly those
services have a much higher value. You can mix and match services within a
rich client to create some very valuable applications.
Rich clients give us the ability to view applications that look and act like
native client programs even though they run remotely. That is a step in the right
direction—and the reason RIA is so important to SOA and cloud computing.
When Money Is Tight
Cloud computing is an alternative to consider seriously when cost savings is
an issue. As we covered in Chapter 4, cloud computing is typically (but not
always) less expensive. If budgets are tight, cloud computing may be the best
option, and we stress may. There are a few rules of thumb here.
First, new companies (startups) and their data, services, and processes
are typically the best fit for cloud computing given that their applications are
new (we cover this next) and that they need to operate with the least possible
amount of overhead. Therefore, the requirement for cheap and new turns
most new companies toward cloud computing. I suspect as they grow that
the use of cloud computing resources for their IT infrastructure will give
them a huge advantage in the marketplace when looking at efficiencies relative
to their larger and older competitors.
Second, existing companies looking to leverage cloud computing need to
carefully consider the true cost advantage of doing so. A typical movement to
the cloud will be an application prototype that is built on an infrastructureas-a-service
or platform-as-a-service cloud, with the battle cry of “cost reduction.”
And it seems logical that an application infrastructure that costs
$10 a day is better than an on-premise infrastructure that costs $100 a day.
However, when you consider all of the costs, including integration, risk, security,
management, and all the things we discussed in Chapter 4, the cost
savings are somewhat diluted if not eliminated.
Avoiding “Hype Mistakes” around Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is well-hyped technology; there is no getting around this
fact. Those moving toward cloud computing, either by building new services,