Next Generation SOA: Can SOA Survive Cloud Computing?

SOA has been widely adopted as architecture of choice to address the requirements of modern organizations, but there are recent indications that many companies are not willing to make the substantial investment required for the transition to SOA in the current economic climate. Recent emergence of Cloud Computing is accelerating the trend of delivering enterprise applications and IT infrastructure in the form of externally provided services. The convergence of Cloud Computing, SaaS and Web 2.0 are redefining the very basis on which the computer industry has operated for decades, challenging some of the key SOA assumptions and principles. In this paper we discuss the challenges that Cloud Computing presents to established concepts in enterprise computing in general, and consider the specific architectural challenges and their implications to future development of SO