Posted [at Judith Hurwitz's Weblog] on February 16, 2008.

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about virtualization and cloud computing. The more I look at the foundational requirements for virtualization the more I am convinced that there is a close relationship. How can I say this? In the simplest terms, if you think about the fact that the foundation of SOA is a loosely coupled approach. So, if you are going to combine components from various systems into a “virtual application”, how do you maintain state of this entity? While there are many techniques used today for SOA implementations (some are more loosely coupled than others), the reality is that it will come down to virtualization.

Let’s start with a definition.

Virtualization is a technique for abstracting the physical characteristics of computing resources in order to more easily leverage hardware systems, applications, operating systems,networks, graphics, data, or storage so they can be repurposed based on customer need. In addition, in order to virtualize a resource, it is basically put into a “container”. This is the same technique used in the traditional approach to SOA. What makes virtualization important for SOA is the ability to move the presentation and availability of these resources across physical networks and devices. [Full Post]