The software as a service approach already has a series of bodies dedicated to ensuring services themselves are interoperable amongst one another. There is the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) which oversees standards like XML and WSDL, as well as OASIS which sets the course for WS-* standards. Initiatives like these have helped mitigate the risk for both customers and vendors, encouraging the software as a service paradigm since applications are not locked into a particular technology. However, until recently there was one area related to service applications that was unaddressed, one having to do with deploying and scaling services.
Once the hurdle of having software enabled as a service is crossed, application interoperability becomes a non-issue, but what happens once a software service is incapable of handling demand with its initial hardware provisions? This inevitably takes us to the analysis of data center infrastructure -- or hosting providers.
Even for non-service designs, deploying and scaling applications beyond their initial stage is a process which often entails a mix of both hardware and software technology, requiring everything from virtualized operating systems and clustered middleware products to load balancers and custom application modifications, all to accommodate increasing demand.
In the software as a service model, rolling out this type of infrastructure may be prohibitive for all but the biggest organizations. But providers have emerged that allow the smallest of organizations to expand application capacity on an as-needed basis, under the utility model of 'pay as you use'. Some of these providers include Amazon's EC2 service and Google's App engine service, as well as specialized software products by companies like 3Tera, RightScale and Elastra, to name a few.
And its herein that lies the importance of standardization in the areas of deployment and scalability for cloud computing. A software service migh...
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