Storm clouds ahead

Cloud computing, which refers primarily to an on-demand service delivery model that may span both outsourced and premises-based platforms, is the hot, new paradigm.

But cloud computing is causing discomfort among some IT professionals, who are concerned that cloud-based services may fall outside the scope of established service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance initiatives.

After several grueling years of implementing life-cycle controls over their Web services environments, these IT pros now worry they may have to radically revamp those efforts to keep pace with rogue adoption of outsourced cloud services.

SOA governance, also known as service governance, refers to practices and tools for enforcing consistent development, security, performance and other policies across the life cycle of key functions, regardless of whether they are hosted internally or provided by outsourcers.

Effective SOA governance is extremely important. It enables organizations to continuously plan, design, validate, publish, provision, monitor, modify, secure and optimize their distributed environments. And it ensures that services deployed in enterprise application environments — be they built on clouds, mainframes or any other platform — comply with regulatory, policy, operational and other baseline requirements.

Strong SOA governance is key to cloud control

In one sense, cloud computing could end up being the best thing to happen to SOA governance. That's because the existence of cloud computing makes governance all the more critical.

In theory, clouds can deliver almost every IT capability — from applications down to middleware, application platforms, and even storage, processing and other hardware resources — as on-demand subscription offerings.

But how does an IT executive provide sound management in a cloud computing world?

"The cloud revitalizes interest in governance because you are extending trust to services across premise and presumably corporate boundaries," says Miko Matsumura, vice president and deputy CTO at Software AG. "Not only is that significant from a governance perspective, but the complexity of mashing up cloud services with on premise applications, integrations and infrastructure requires a framework for maintaining overall integrity."

In other words, clouds complicate the SOA governance picture. Without proper governance, anyone could deploy a new cloud service any time they wish, and anyone could invoke and orchestrate that service into ever more convoluted messaging patterns.

In a governance-free environment, coordinated cloud service planning and optimization becomes frustratingly difficult. In addition, rogue cloud services could spring up and pass themselves off as legitimate nodes, thereby wreaking havoc on the delicate trust that underlies production SOA.

Simply put, cloud services can circumvent even the best-laid service governance practices. By enabling rapid no-touch outsourcing of many or all IT functions, cloud services make it very difficult for enterprise IT to enforce policies governing service composition, integration, security, management, and other key functions.