Archives for Cloud app integration trends category
ALM and the ESB can add functionality to cloud integration scenarios
Application lifecycle management (ALM) and enterprise service buses (ESBs) have long had a part in helping to meet on-premise application integration challenges. But these technologies have a place in cloud-based application integration as well.
We recently spoke with Geoji George, Director of Product Management, Integration Division at Pervasive, about the inclusion of these technologies in a cloud integration tool. Pervasive released a cloud-based version of its Data Integrator v10 this past November that includes an ALM tool and an ESB. Read more… »
10
Jan
Posted in Cloud app integration trends by Mike Ponta on Jan 10 2011
Publicly available APIs increase integration capability
While software companies once provided integration plug-ins and custom code for their users and partners, the rapid expansion and growth of cloud applications means that providers cannot keep up with integration demand. Now, more and more software companies are helping users and other vendors do their own integrations. To allow for this, they’re providing publicly accessible application programming interfaces (APIs).
An API is is a set of rules, protocols, and code accompanying an application that describe how third-party programmers can interact with it.
The number of open cloud APIs has exploded over the past year, and will continue to grow through 2011. According to a recent report, API repository Programmable Web added 1019 APIs in 2010, twice as many as they added in 2009. According to the report, APIs from social networking sites were the most commonly added API type. The author expects that trend to only expand. He suggests 2011 may be “the year of the API.”
API growth may go beyond the enterprise as standards discussion continues
API growth may not be only limited to enterprise service providers. Adam Kleinberg at Mashable.com believes that every brand should have an API. As brands create applications with consumer appeal—the author references a collection of games from Kraft, for example—an open API can create value and spread utility through customer involvement.
While more and more unique APIs become available every day, open cloud APIs are also at the center of the cloud standards discussion. We discussed API standards with Mule CTO Ross Mason in December. Two weeks ago, API standards were discussed at the SOATalk blog. The author mentions that standardized APIs may create API lock-in.
27
Dec
Posted in Cloud app integration trends by Mike Ponta on Dec 27 2010
Below is a compilation of 5 cloud computing prediction lists for 2011. Read the highlights here, and get a full list at each link provided.
Forrester’s James Staten provided this list of 10 cloud computing predictions for 2011. He predicts that hosted private clouds “will outnumber internal clouds 3 to 1″ and that substantial cloud standards are not going to arrive any time in the coming year. He also says that business operations will continue to have greater influence over the direction of IT.
Author Bernard Golden here presents 10 cloud computing predictions for 2011, divided between cloud service providers and end users. Golden predicts that emerging economies will rush to adopt cloud computing, similar to how to many developing countries skipped fixed-line telephones in favor of mobile devices. He also suggests that IT departments will continue to be challenged by new technology, and must constantly learn new strategies to keep up with software innovations.
Contributor John Barnes, CTO of Model Metrics, predicts that large organizations are still not ready for the public cloud. Writes Barnes: “CIOs have taken notice of the cloud computing benefits, however, they have accountability for their actions and as much as they want to demonstrate that they have a cloud strategy.” Because of low risk tolerance in large corporations, Barnes predicts that private clouds will become more popular among large enterprises.
Jeff Kaplan here offers ten predictions for the cloud in 2011. Most germane to this site is number seven: “Vendors that provide cloud integration tools and professional services, in particular, will be key acquisition targets because they represent a critical component in pulling the various cloud piece-parts together.”
The Oracle-to-buy-Salesforce rumor has been churning for a while, and author David Linthicum thinks it’s going to happen this coming year. He also believes that cloud will enable hackers—not to hack into the cloud, but to use the cloud to hack better. Having access to more CPU power means that one hacker can accomplish much more than ever before.
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20
Dec
Posted in Cloud app integration trends by Mike Ponta on Dec 20 2010
Writer Andrew McAfee gives an overview of how the digital economy “passed a tipping point” this past year as a result of cloud computing. He believes that this is a new age of technology use, defined not only by cloud computing but that which cloud computing powers. He points out the rise of social computing, the expectation that software will be intuitive and enjoyable, and scientific decision making within business organizations as part of the “era of the cloud.”
SearchCloudComputing.com provides ten insightful tips for cloud computing users gleaned from a yearful of advice. Number one, not surprisingly, is how to understand and contend with security issues in the cloud. Also on the list is advice about cloud pricing and management.
The author explains that the list of top services was chosen “based upon what trends bubbled in 2010 and the companies and organizations that responded or even set the tone for the overall market.” Present are Amazon, Salesforce, Windows Azure and VMware. But also on the list are recently-acquired Ruby platform Heroku, public code repository Github, and telephony company Twilio.
Another broad look at the cloud computing year. From an integration standpoint, the rise of the Platform as a Service and a heightened focus Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) stand out.
SearchCloudComputing.com has knack for writing about the stories that fly under the radar but are no less important. So there’s nothing in hear about major product releases or acquisitions. Instead, find out how Terremark’s vCloud Express seven hour outage and an hour-long outage at Salesforce.com proved that cloud was not fail-safe, and why Microsoft Azure pricing problems prove cloud is not a simple, money-saving switch for everyone.
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Some SaaS application databases have limited functionality compared to relational database with SQL
While many major cloud applications offer a database as part of a service, that database option may limit what can be done with the data.
We spoke with Jitterbit CTO Ilan Sehayek about the use cases for cloud data replication. He says that cloud data replication allows users to improve data usability. One example of how data usability can be improved with cloud data replication is by putting Salesforce.com data into a relational database.
“That way they have relational access to that data,” said Sehayek. “The query language in Salesforce doesn’t give the types of information that [some customers] are looking for,” said Sehayek.
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ESB as a Service will emerge as integration option over coming years
The ESB as a Service is not in wide use, but industry leaders believe that the demand for the ESB as a Service will grow rapidly in the next few years.
An ESB, or enterprise service bus, is an integration middleware layer that helps integrate applications written in different languages or frameworks. An ESB as a Service would make the functionality of the ESB available over a public or private network.
We recently talked with CTOs at open source ESB providers WSO2 and MuleSoft about the future of the ESB as a Service. For now, the adoption of the ESB as a Service parallels broader cloud adoption trends.
“Large enterprises are pretty conservative,” said Paul Fremantle, CTO of WSO2. “But we see that attitude, that people are not willing to do things in the public cloud, is changing.”
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Cloud service release suggests popularity of hybrid approach
Rackspace today announced Cloud Connect, a service designed to improve scalability by integrating proprietary hosting servers with Rackspace’s cloud servers. The release of a service like Cloud Connect points to a larger trend in cloud computing: enterprise users want the benefits of public infrastructure but want to keep control of their most important applications.
Recent commentary supports that claim. Mike Vizard of ITBusinessEdge suggests that Cloud Connect helps companies integrate mission critical applications running on private infrastructure with other applications running in the public cloud.
Rackspace CTO John Engates told ZDNet that Cloud Connect is a means for handling bandwidth overflow from a private cloud into a public cloud while maintaining compliance and security.
Releases such as Cloud Connect highlight the reality of today’s cloud computing market: the enterprise is not ready to put everything on the public cloud, so cloud computing providers must accommodate hybrid approaches that combine cloud and traditional systems.
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Cloud computing still “the wild west” when it comes to standardization
We spoke recently with Ross Mason, CTO of open source enterprise service bus (ESB) provider MuleSoft. As an open source integration tool, the Mule ESB makes use of standards whenever possible. But Mason believes that standards for cloud integration will need a few years to mature.
“There’s a lot of discussions on many of the architecture boards around defining different standards for the cloud,” said Mason. “Unfortunately, I don’t think any of that is really going to take hold until we start seeing more widespread usage, and then we’ll see second generation where we might get more standardized.”
“It’s still the wild west,” added Mason.
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Java at center of upcoming PaaS offerings from Red Hat, IBM
When cloud computing hype began, many viewers foresaw the end of Java. The programming language was, in their eyes, too cumbersome for the demands of fast and lightweight performance in internet-based computing. The introduction of VMForce and addition of Java support to the Google App Engine proved Java had a place in the cloud. Recent Java Platform as a Service (Paas) developments suggest Java is becomeing further entrenched.
Red Hat announced the purchase Makara,an application deployment and monitoring provider, in order to accelerate development of its PaaS offering. According to Tim Prickett Morgan at Channel Register, Makara’s cloud application platform helps scale resources allocated to Java applications as they run on a PaaS. Because Java applications are often demanding of resources, scalability is essential.
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Hybrid cloud management the substance beneath “hybrid cloud” hype
The hype surrounding hybrid cloud may suggest that it’s a paradigm-shifting idea. But combining internet-based services with private cloud resources is not revolution, it’s simply responsible: It rarely makes sense to swap an entire technology stack into the public cloud, but the advantages of hosted SaaS and commoditized infrastructure are not usually worth foregoing entirely. As an ITBusinessEdge article points out, just about all cloud computing will be hybrid cloud computing.
If nearly all cloud scenarios will be hybrid in some way or another, simply identifying the type of cloud is no longer important. More significant than identifying a cloud type is the discussion about hybrid cloud management: What’s the best way to maintain control over data and applications while still making use of cloud technology? For many observers integration is paramount.
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