Just have to love some marketing folks and analysts that jump to the latest buzz word and extol the differences, benefits, pitfalls, fear, uncertainty and doubt. There have recently been some press releases concerning cloud computing concepts and technology that seems to have been lifted from previous Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) overviews from the same vendors.
SOA and cloud computing are very different concepts, and they are not interchangeable concepts. SOA deals with underlying technology, cloud deals with business delivery. Effective SOA deployments within a company can lay the groundwork for internal or private cloud formations, but an SOA architecture does not necessarily evolve to cloud computing.
In cloud computing, you pay for the outcome, not the technology. In cloud computing, the service terminology you are focusing on is a relationship between the service provider and client or consumer. The client or consumer should not be concerned about the underlying cloud technology as long as the data is secure, it is easy to access, and maintains compliance with underlying security standards like SOX or HIPPA. Cloud computing involves concepts like rapid scalability, computing on-demand and virtual computing. There are some underlying key tenets to SOA that can be adopted by cloud computing: governance, loosely coupled systems, sharable services, etc.
A cloud computing service vendor would be more concerned about the underlying technology and efficiency and shared services that can be spread amongst the greatest number of clients, but the consumer of those business benefits should not really care how cost efficient the vendor might actually be as long as the vendor meets the agreed upon Service Level Agreements (SLA).
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