Hybrid Cloud For Dummies

Why Service Orientation Matters in the Cloud

Hybrid cloud environments are becoming important because organizations are constantly reinventing themselves to respond to change and to become more competitive. These organizations recognize that IT must be at the forefront of a business strategy based on innovation and transformation. They also understand that it’s hard to find one IT computing approach that is the best one for all types of workloads. Therefore, the most practical approach is to implement a hybrid cloud environment. (See Chapter 9 for more on the business value of hybrid cloud.)

To make a cloud infrastructure work in the real world requires a high level of flexibility and modularity. A cloud must be designed to support a variety of workloads and business services. No one can anticipate when a service needs to be scaled up and when it will be scaled down. Specifically, it is this service-oriented approach to architectural design that supports the key cloud characteristics of elasticity, self-service provisioning, standards-based interfaces, and pay-as-you-go flexibility. The combination of a service-oriented approach and cloud services enables companies to lower costs and improve business flexibility.

Utilizing reusable and loosely coupled components makes scalability and elasticity a reality for public and private cloud environments. Consider what might happen in a cloud environment if the principles of service orientation aren’t applied. Say, for example, that you’ve ...