You have to take the good with the bad, and while SOA is doing great things in the world of cloud computing, there are some downers that I'm noticing as well. Let's discuss my top 3.
First, SOA vendors that don't understand their own role in the cloud are killing SOA in the cloud. Time and time again I'm running up against older SOA players that have no idea how their technology works and plays in the world of cloud computing. Thus, they undersell or oversell their products with very little understanding of context. Understand what you do, and the role that your product plays in the clouds. You'll sell more, trust me.
Second, cloud computing consultants that don't understand SOA, but say they do, are killing SOA in the cloud. Many cloud computing consultants who came from the infrastructure side of things, have figured out that it's good to have SOA on the client presentations and proposals, but have no clear understanding of how SOA actually functions when defining and building a cloud computing solution. SOA is not just about turning everything and anything into a service and calling a SOA. It's about defining an architecture that becomes many solutions that align with the business, not just a single instance of a solution.
Finally, the hype eating monsters are killing SOA in the cloud. This is the guy who says "cloud computing" so many times in meetings that if it was a drinking game, the entire conference room would be blitzed 10 minutes into the discussion. This guy speeds to the cloud avoiding any sort of pesky architectural planning, and thus SOA is tossed out the window quickly, although he's selling it as a SOA project internally. The end result is the development of more stovepipes, less agility, and a major cloud computing hang over once this guy has had his cloud computing way with most of the major IT systems.
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