A data-focused perspective on SOA and cloud computing: The utility of patterns in redevelopment

Cloud, SOA, Client-Server, mini computers, NoSQL, Hadoop … the list can appear endless. What these various silver bullets have in common is that they promise to help solve business problems and that as IT solutions they often fail to deliver on initial promises. This talk takes a long-term perspective, examining first the original promise of these two complementary technologies and second, relative track records to date. With this background, it is now possible to understand their strengths and weaknesses in context. Two important concepts emerge: (1) in what contexts do these technologies excel, and (2) how can we use this information to make existing SOA and cloud applications more useful — through maintenance — to their respective applications. The talk closes with some open research challenges as well as general architectural guidelines to help guide future maintenance efforts.