For years,
organizations have had to commit large sums of money to CAPital EXpenditure
(CPEX) on IT hardware and Software licenses. This has meant that organizations
had to purchase hardware and software licenses based on their peak usage which
may occur for a limited amount of time in a given day. In this way, their hardware
systems can remain lightly loaded and totally underutilized for large parts of
a working day, week or month. This also results in great difficulty
apportioning costs back to different cost centres making use of the same
hardware and software.
Cloud computing
offers usage based pricing whereby an organizational unit only pays for what it
uses while having the capacity to scale to support peak demand with no
reduction in service. This means that CAPEX can be eliminated and the costs rolled
into the OPerational EXpenditure (OPEX). This has the potential to solve both
problems as the organization doesn’t have to keep redundant hardware lying
around while organizational units can pay for their IT resources as they use
them.
What has not fully
been addressed with Cloud computing to date is how the applications on the
system can be accessed in a standard way. Of course the traditional software
stacks may be installed but this then leads to a requirement to have knowledge
of what is within the Cloud. The SOA Gateway offers the ability to enable an
organization to create data and services within a Cloud, discover in a standard
way what is available there and then use it without any knowledge of the inner
workings of the cloud.
2.What
is Cloud Computing
Various definitions can be found for Cloud Computing and the following
one from Wikipedia is quoted here as it’s as good as any of them:
‘Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.’
From a graphical perspective, the concept is that there is a Cloud
filled with data and business logic that can be accessed by users. As users
start up or finish using the system, the Cloud can grow or decline depending on
the capacity required.
The key to the above pictures is the access to the data and business
logic within the Cloud. There is no strict standard as to what this interface
should be in terms of Cloud ‘standards’. Using proprietary interfaces will lead
to a less portable solution and will mean that users and developers will need
to understand what the Cloud contains which reduces the flexibility of the
solution.
3.
Enhancing
the Cloud
By taking some well accepted standards, it’s possible to enhance the
capability of a Cloud based system as can be seen from the following:
By providing a Universal
Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) server within the Cloud which
documents what data and business logic services are available, programmers and
users can find out what services are on offer within the Cloud and can then use
them using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) or REpresentational
State Transfer (REST) standards to invoke the
available services. As UDDI and SOAP work universally, this means that the
Cloud implementation can be hosted by the most appropriate Cloud provider based
on cost, SLAs or whatever criteria is most relevant to the organization. In
addition, users of the Cloud need have no knowledge of what is running where or
on what software stack within the cloud.
4.
SOA
Gateway and the Cloud
The
SOA Gateway facilitates this type of enhancement to the Cloud by providing the
interfaces to various backend databases and languages:
The SOA Gateway facilitates the
access to data and business logic using SOAP and REST and enables the registration
of each available service in a UDDI server so that it’s possible to search for
services that a user wishes to use. Once a service has been found, the SOA
Gateway delivers the WSDL to the consumer and this can be used to then invoke
the service. In this way, a user or programmer can make use of the Cloud
without any knowledge of the inner workings of the Cloud.
5.
SOA
Gateway and Development in the Cloud
This
configuration can also be used to seamlessly create new services within a Cloud
infrastructure.
The SOA Gateway
Eclipse based configuration component facilitates the creation of new data or
business logic services which can then be registered in the UDDI server for
discovery. These services can then be used in turn by consumers of those
services without any knowledge of what is in the Cloud. The key advantage here
is that the Cloud is a totally opaque entity as the developers, software
testers and users are completely unaware of the anything about the Cloud except
for the IP address where it is hosted.
6.
SOA
Gateway and Legacy Migration to the Cloud
This configuration
facilitates the migration of existing data or business logic from an existing
proprietary platform to the Cloud. This is a four step process as follows:
1.
The SOA Gateway creates a service based on the data
source or business logic on the existing platform.
2.
This service may be used by various clients to access
the existing data or business logic.
3.
The SOA Gateway configuration component can then
recreate the same data or business logic service in the Cloud system.
4.
The SOA Gateway can register the new services for
discovery.
5.
Once the service is available and tested in the Cloud,
the clients simply switch their end points to use the Cloud based service and
the existing service may be deprecated and eventually removed from the existing
platform.
7.
Conclusions
·
Cloud
Computing is still very much in its infancy but promises a lot of what organizations
have been asking for over the years: Less CAPEX and more OPEX.
·
It
presents the possibility to finally unbundle your back end services from your
front end technologies.
·
Adopting
a proprietary interface to talk to the Cloud will simply lock you in as you are
bound today.
·
Using
standards based interfaces, it is possible to unlock your front end processing
from your back end processing.
·
As
UDDI and SOAP work universally, this means that the Cloud implementation can be
hosted by the most appropriate Cloud provider based on cost, SLAs or whatever
criteria is most relevant to the organization. In addition, users of the Cloud
need have no knowledge of what is running where or on what software stack
within the cloud.
·
The SOA Gateway can provide those
interfaces to make your Cloud truly an Opaque entity which can be moved between
Clouds at will.
·
The
SOA
Gateway provides a development capacity for developing new
applications and data services within the Cloud.
·
The
SOA
Gateway provides the capability to migrate selected services from
your existing proprietary machines into the Cloud with no development effort.
8.
About
The SOA Gateway
8.
The SOA Gateway
is a cost effective software tool to:
Access data faster...
It enables access to data from a wide range of database languages
(ADABAS, MySQL, DB2, VSAM, Oracle etc.) without server side code, or expensive
middleware.
Access business logic
easier...
The SOA Gateway enables easy access and re-use of valuable business
logic available in CICS, COBOL, C, NATURAL and many other languages and
environments.
The SOA Gateway is developed by integration specialists Risaris Limited.
For a free trail of the SOA Gateway, please visit: http://www.soagateway.com/html/registration_form.php
For more information visit: www.risaris.com or email john.power@risaris.com
© Risaris 2008
Soagateway.com - Soa Gateway is a software
tool used in soa projects, data application, soa gateway projects, data application,
web applications, php applications, legacy migration, legacy data, legacy
systems and data access integration.
www.soagateway.com
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