Build Upon SOA Governance to Realize Cloud Governance

By E.G. Nadhan, HP

The Open Group SOA Governance Framework just became an International Standard available to government and enterprises worldwide. At the same time, I read an insightful post by ZDNet Blogger, Joe McKendrick who states that Cloud and automation drive new growth in SOA governance market. I have always maintained that the fundamentals of Cloud Computing are based upon SOA principles. This brings up the next natural question: Where are we with Cloud Governance?

I co-chair the Open Group project for defining the Cloud Governance framework. Fundamentally, the Cloud Governance framework builds upon The Open Group SOA Governance Framework and provides additional context for Cloud Governance in relation to other governance standards in the industry. We are with Cloud Governance today where we were with SOA Governance a few years back when The Open Group started on the SOA Governance framework project.

McKendrick goes on to say that the tools and methodologies built and stabilized over the past few years for SOA projects are seeing renewed life as enterprises move to the Cloud model. In McKendrick’s words, “it is just a matter of getting the word out.” That may be the case for the SOA governance market. But, is that so for Cloud Governance?

When it comes to Cloud Governance, it is more than just getting the word out. We must make progress in the following areas for Cloud Governance to become real:

• Sustained adoption. Enterprises must continuously adopt cloud based services balancing it with outsourcing alternatives. This will give more visibility to the real-life use cases where Cloud Governance can be exercised to validate and refine the enabling set of governance models.

• IT optimization. Cloud adoption must happen with CIOs integrating the business of IT to combat its consumerization. CIOs must be objective integrators while viewing IT as one of the candidate service providers. This CIO mind-set is a defining requirement for effective Cloud Governance.

• Service standardization. Cloud standards continue to emerge. Cloud Services Providers must have standards to conform to as I detail in this post on 5 criteria that crystallize an industry-wide standard for service providers.

• Seamless management. Converged solutions in the cloud have a healthy combination of physical and virtual resources. These resources must be monitored seamlessly agnostic to their enabling physical or virtual environments. Such monitoring will trigger the appropriate steps to be executed the context of Cloud Governance.

• Framework Definition. Finally, Cloud Governance needs a standard framework to facilitate its adoption. Just like the SOA Governance Framework, the definition of a standard for the Cloud Governance Framework as well as the supporting reference models will pave the way for the consistent adoption of Cloud Governance.

Once these progressions are made, Cloud Governance will be positioned like SOA Governance—and it will then be just a “matter of getting the word out.”

A version of this blog post originally appeared on the Journey through Enterprise IT Services Blog.

HP Distinguished Technologist and Cloud Advisor, E.G.Nadhan has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry across the complete spectrum of selling, delivering and managing enterprise level solutions for HP customers. He is the founding co-chair for The Open Group SOCCI project and is also the founding co-chair for the Open Group Cloud Computing Governance project. Connect with Nadhan on: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Journey Blog.