SOC

I am almost shocked by the vast volume of tweets hitting #Cloud. Of course it’s a reflection of the frenetic level of interest in the subject. But it’s also because Cloud Computing is such a huge, complex domain. Following in the well-trodden pat…

I am almost shocked by the vast volume of tweets hitting #Cloud. Of course it’s a reflection of the frenetic level of interest in the subject. But it’s also because Cloud Computing is such a huge, complex domain.

Following in the well-trodden path of many new information technology concepts we might expect morphing to occur. Much of the Cloud focus has been about infrastructure and technology, plus commodity applications, productivity tools and multi-tenant Web applications. Whilst all the really good Cloud environments are Service Oriented, it’s very much the minority of consumer SaaS that is today.

Yet it’s very obvious the next stage of Cloud will be about enterprise services. And as private and virtual private Clouds become respectable and trusted, we should expect a huge push by enterprises to demand modernization and rationalization of application landscapes into the Cloud with cost and agility objectives in mind.

But while everyone calls everything a service there’s potential for huge confusion. Further everyone needs to know that right now few existing applications, regardless of how recently they have been “modernized” are Cloud ready. Regardless of private or public Cloud deployments, they need to be genuinely secure, componentized and service enabled and many of them need to be multi-tenant architecture if they are to deliver the expected cost benefits.

To differentiate between the morass of stuff that’s happening and what’s needed in a genuinely Cloud ready SOA environment, I propose we start right now referring to the SERVICE ORIENTED CLOUD or SOC for short. It’s small step, but it will make life easier for everyone, and indeed allow those of us focused on the SOA enabled SaaS layer to have a nomenclature that works, as opposed to continuously committing unintended double entendre.

I recommend we start by hitting #serviceorientedcloud