Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise ─ A Step-by-Step Guide

“In this book, David Linthicum does that rarest of things: he manages to combine showing why SOA and Cloud Computing complement one another with a lucid game plan of how a business can take advantage of the synergies between them in concrete ways that will contribute to the bottom line.”

Massive, disruptive change is coming to IT as Software as a Service (SaaS), SOA, mashups, Web 2.0, and cloud computing truly come of age. Now, one of the world’s leading IT innovators explains what it all means—coherently, thoroughly, and authoritatively.

Writing for IT executives, architects, and developers alike, world-renowned expert David S. Linthicum explains why the days of managing IT organizations as private fortresses will rapidly disappear as IT inevitably becomes a global community. He demonstrates how to run IT when critical elements of customer, product, and business data and processes extend far beyond the firewall—and how to use all that information to deliver real-time answers about everything from an individual customer’s credit to the location of a specific cargo container.

Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise offers a clear-eyed assessment of the challenges associated with this new world—and offers a step-by-step program for getting there with maximum return on investment and minimum risk. Using multiple examples, Linthicum:

• Reviews the powerful cost, value, and risk-related drivers behind the move to cloud computing—and explains why the shift will accelerate
• Explains the technical underpinnings, supporting technologies, and best-practice methods you’ll need to make the transition
• Helps you objectively assess the promise of SaaS, Web 2.0, and SOA for your organization, quantify value, and make the business case
• Walks you through evaluating your existing IT infrastructure and finding your most cost-effective, safest path to the “cloud”
• Shows how to choose the right candidate data, services, and processes for your cloud computing initiatives
• Guides you through building disruptive infrastructure and next-generation process platforms
• Helps you bring effective, high-value governance to the clouds

If you’re ready to begin driving real competitive advantage from cloud computing, this book is the start-to-finish roadmap you need to make it happen.

David S. Linthicum (Dave) knows cloud computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA). He is an internationally recognized industry expert and thought leader and the author and coauthor of thirteen books on computing, including the best-selling Enterprise Application Integration (Addison-Wesley). Dave keynotes at many leading technology conferences on cloud computing, SOA, Web 2.0, and enterprise architecture, and he has appeared on a number of television and radio shows as a computing expert. He is a blogger for InfoWorld, Intelligent Enterprise, and eBizq.net, covering SOA and enterprise computing topics. Dave also has columns in Government Computer News, Cloud Computing Journal, SOA Journal, and Align Journal, and is the editor of Virtualization Journal.

In his career, Dave has formed or enhanced many of the ideas behind modern distributed computing, including enterprise application integration, B2B application integration, and SOA, all of which are approaches and technologies in wide use today. For the last ten years, Dave has focused on the technology and strategies around cloud computing and how to make cloud computing work for the modern enterprise. This includes work with several cloud computing startups.

Dave’s industry experience includes tenure as CTO and CEO of several successful software companies and upper-level management positions in Fortune 100 companies. In addition, he was an associate professor of computer science for eight years and continues to lecture at major technical colleges and universities, including the University of Virginia, Arizona State University, and the University of Wisconsin.