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

24 Chapter 2 Reaching for the Clouds
scratch. You can find many bits and pieces of an application within the
clouds and get much farther down the road than if you built your system
from scratch.
A good example of a use case is a data service to provide credit check information.
You can host the data yourself and build the interface using traditional
technology. Or, you can leverage one of dozens of service providers in the
cloud to provide the required information through a Web API (see Figure 2.2),
which is typically a Web Service (information-as-a-service). You would leverage
this service as if it were local to the applications that use it, despite that it
could be thousands of miles away. All of this, if done correctly, is transparent to
those who use the application.
The difference is in operating costs and speed to market. In the build-itand-host-it-yourself
scenario, in some circumstances, the cost is a few times
more than if you find that same functionality and information in the cloud.
Moreover, it typically takes more time to get the darn thing up and running
if you build it yourself. Considering maintenance costs, human resources
needed, and the fact that the service you are leveraging is not your company’s
core business, the case for the cloud becomes even more compelling. The fit
for cloud computing, however, is going to be based on the needs of the par-
System
System
Cloud-Delivered
Applications and
Services
Figure 2.2 Cloud computing allows you to leverage application components you
do not have to build.