Cloud-based Integration

There has been a lot of press over the last year about cloud computing. Web-based applications like Salesforce.com have demonstrated the utility and cost-effectiveness of cloud-based resources. Integration vendors have also begun providing products designed for the cloud. Like the few other cloud-based integration products, the XAware engine can be installed and run in a cloud computing environment. This architecture lets you avoid local infrastructure investments, and is most beneficial when you need to integrate data sources and applications involving other cloud-based or SaaS resources (not all resources are premise-based). If you are using SaaS or other internet-based resources, placing an integration component like XAware on the internet makes sense. It makes less sense if all your application components are premise-based, depending on performance requirements. This latter scenario would have multiple premise-based components contributing data to a cloud-based integration application, where the data is combined and transformed, then sent back into premise-based resources. Only a few types of integration applications can afford the performance cost of such a round-trip to/from the cloud.

If you're interested in experimenting with XAware in the cloud, you might read the new Wiki article on installing the XAware engine in Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) environment . This environment lets you pay Amazon for hardware and software resources as you go, providing a very cost-effective and flexible environment for many integration applications.

SOA Sweet Spot: Integration

A survey released this week from AmberPoint, titled "State of SOA Adoption Survey", shows steady growth in SOA adoption among respondents. While I always take a vendor-sponsored survey with a grain of salt, AmberPoint seems to have found their way to real SOA implementers in the corporate environment. Systems Integrators, vendors, and consultants were culled out of the distribution list, leaving only end-users: "a database of IT professionals who have an understanding for SOA concepts and methodologies.... a large population of architects, operations staff and developers." Only a fraction of respondents were AmberPoint customers (15%). The promising news from the survey is that the vast majority of respondents (98%) viewed SOA projects as having a high degree of success. That figure breaks down with 38% stating their projects were a success, achieving all desired goals, and 60% cateogorizing projects as "partially successful", meeting most of the goals.

I happen to agree with the results, as they are consistent with a steady growth in SOA projects that I have seen. One of the more compelling survey questions deals with what problems companies are solving with SOA - Integration tops the list by far, with 75% of respondents saying SOA addresses integration-related issues. I saw one article this week about flailing SOA projects (Time for a ’stimulus package’ for SOA? ), but there seems to be a developing consensus that SOA doesn't solve every problem. No surprise there. Like any technology, SOA is good at solving many problems, but some problems are better left to other solutions. What this survey clearly indicates is that integration is SOA's sweet spot.