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

Diving Deeper into Cloud Computing 23
In many respects, cloud computing is about abstracting the cloud computing
resource from the underlying hardware and software, which are remotely
hosted. Thus, you deal with the service and almost never with the
needs and requirements of the platform, including maintenance, monitoring,
and the cost of the hardware and data center space. More simply put,
cloud computing is
Stuff you do not own.
Stuff you do not maintain, at least from an infrastructure point of view.
Stuff you do not see.
Stuff you pay for as a subscription or perhaps get for free.
Expandable on demand.
Reducible on demand.
The concept is to leverage computing resources that you do not own or
maintain, and thereby lower the cost of computing through economies of
scale. The more that organizations share cloud computing resources, the less
they should cost (see Figure 2.1).
Moreover, you can leverage computing resources that provide more prebuilt
component parts and thereby avoid having to build everything from
Partner
B2B
Exchange
Distributor
SOA
Internet
Platform-as-a-Service
Cloud Platforms
Database-as-a-Service
Existing Systems
Figure 2.1
Cloud computing provides access to shared resources.