Ripping Apart The Cloud Computing Reference Architecture by IBM- WIP….

 

IBM has had this notorious reputation of trying to pull out something from thin air and call it “Reference Architecture” , twisted for the purpose of either embedding sales thought for there product without much rationale. This document is no different , they have taken SOA and extended to Cloud Reference Architecture. The feedback to the grey heads at IBM please smile you are on Jay Leno. The link to the document ARC 101 - Architecture Overview Diagram

IBM has been late to enter on the cloud bandwagon. It seemed to finally jumped in with its Smart Cloud Computing initiative pretty much piggy backing on Amazon suite. How could IBM stay away from writing a grand Reference Architecture which seemingly IBM’s sweet spot for last 3 decades.  Walking through the IBM’s Cloud Reference Architecture following some of my observations.

As always the first thing I read in an IBM Reference Architecture(RA) document excerpt

“The Cloud Computing Reference Architecture is intended to be used as a blueprint / guide for architecting cloud implementations, driven by functional and non-functional requirements of the respective cloud implementation. Consequently, the CC RA should not be viewed as fine-granular deployment specification of just a single specific cloud implementation  “

As you dwell further in the document pass the initial sections suddenly out of the bolt of blue or the big blue throws in the old boys lingo “SOA” , Not surprisingly that’s one the favorite topic of IBM’s grey head “senior consultant” to go gaga over it. Having done the bit of lady gaga on SOA.

“Cloud and SOA Mix” Interesting weird.SOA has been around for a long time , a lot of organizations have implemented SOA within the ecosystem and outside to integrate with other partners, businesses so what’s the idea the IBM guys are trying portray here. Very confusing for any reader to understand but here the straight forward way of looking at what IBM grey heads are talking about

Most companies have built rich SOA based platforms buying IBM complete crap of ESB and the loads of products around that how do I see the vision in the cloud, So here is the answer the Hybrid Cloud Model will continue stretch your IBM ecosystem into cloud . Cloud computing enables this paradigm by adding cloud characteristics to the services being delivered & consumed.  So what’s the big difference the cloud “alities” have been introduced into the platform and given it back to the customer & IBM makes money, smart dollars oops sorry I meant smart cloud computing.

Please IBM give me something new…..

Next the document jumps on talking about definition of SOA from an open group stand point of view. How more confusing can you get……

The entire organization ecosystem would practice SOA, have ESB and have number of other business application, moving all of this to the cloud and assuming the platform has the cloud “alities” inbuilt can make some sense, but this is likely to be the focal point for most organization , they have the option to move to private, public cloud. So IBM by upgrading its product stack to the cloud “alities” has manage to make some sense. Big Blue there needs to a more precise approach to migrating on premise to cloud & that what would appeal to most of the crowd not some SOA cloud jargon,

The document further goes interject the idea of SOA into cloud a document excerpt “If you need to understand the CCRA its important you understand relationship between SOA & Cloud”. I would tend to agree to a certain degree the Cloud stack is been built on the idea “SOA – ESB implementation used with the principles of multi tenancy and throwing virtualization, this statement will really throw a lot of cloud expert ranting that “this is complete crap”.

CCRA uses SOA to build on the Cloud Story , the different service model IAAS, PAAS , SAAS , BPAAS. If do look at a classic SOA – ESB implementation for an enterprise organization introduce virtualization and throw all the alities of cloud it is indeed the cloud, no debating.

CCRA uses SOA Reference Architecture provided by the Open Group as basic Architecture Building Block story and expand on it further duh… tell me something which I don’t know.