My colleague Jack Vaughn is out at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit 2010 in Los Angeles, Calif., and provides some fresh new perspectives on the relationship between SOA and cloud computing. Namely, that to get to cloud, you need SOA. Just as you need electricity before you can turn on a light bulb. And, like electricity, will just be there when you need it -- without having to think about it too much.
Jack quotes Gartner analyst Jeff Schulman: "Service orientation is a prerequisite for cloud. This doesn't mean that a mature SOA must already exist before an enterprise can venture into the cloud, but rather that architecture strategies that involve cloud must have a service orientation."
The discussion brings to mind Miko Matsumura's point, made here at an ebizQ Webcast, that the ultimate SOA should be part of an organization's "muscle memory." That is, it should be operating behind the scenes, to the point where SOA is "weightless," thoroughly baked into the organization, to the point where it's automatic, or second nature,
Perhaps that should be the second act for SOA -- making it second nature.
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