Editor’s Note by Charles Knapp, Director of Content Marketing

Rick Beers notes, “Our understanding of the evolution of ERP will dictate how well we will manage our journeys to the Cloud and the next generation of business computing.” As we observed in our previous blog post, “Lessons from the Rise of SaaS,” by the mid-late 2000’s there was pent-up demand among business leaders for innovative technology. Salesforce.com led the way, tapping into sales and marketing organizations directly, bypassing IT altogether.

CIOs were left to integrate departmental SaaS applications with enterprise systems of record. In many cases the most economical and rapid approach was to build and maintain point to point integrations. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) middleware was an option where the need for Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) scalability could be funded by enterprise-sized budgets.

Platform as a Service Adds Integrations and Processes

Over the past few years cloud-based middleware, referred to as Platform as a Service (PaaS) has emerged, matured quickly, and is gaining momentum. SaaS and on Premise applications customers now have several scalable approaches that will enable them to get started where it makes most sense for their business.

Integration as a service will continue to offer full SOA as an option, but the emergence of ‘micro services’ provides a scalable and adaptable opportunity for customers having specific, process-driven integration needs. Rather than relying on an enterprise service bus, micro-services will connect process tasks, via APIs, enabling any of the tasks to change independent of the others. SOA will not disappear. It is evolving as technologies always do. There will still be reasons for an ESB (large volume exchanges of data and trading partner integration, for example). Customers now have a choice.

Beyond integration alone, PaaS has the potential to be the enabler of Hybrid Cloud Platforms, bringing the three application layers together:

• On premises, standardized systems of record
• SaaS applications for differentiation and adaptability
• Engagement systems such as portals and mobility

Hybrid Cloud Platforms may thus finally deliver upon the early visions of a pace layered framework enabling for the enterprise a continuum of change modeled around the business.

Infrastructure as a Service Adds Flexibility in Architectural Foundations

And there is also Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to consider. What may be the safest route for many such customers to start is with Applications Development. Creating Dev/Test environments in the Cloud would be the first step towards IaaS adoption on a broader scale.

Looking at the opportunities that the Cloud has to offer within a Hybrid environment, it’s clear that something exciting is beginning to happen. We have evolved beyond client-server frameworks and this next era will be defined by Choice, just as the previous one was defined by Standardization. Now, we will need the wisdom to make the right choices.

Next Time: The Three Cloud Problem

The diversity of the Hybrid Cloud allows, even encourages multiple paths to adoption based upon the leveraging of existing investments, managed cost and optimal business value. But first, IT and business leaders need to consider how they will solve the “Three Cloud Problem.” We will share strategic research insights from Richard Villars, IDC’s Vice President, Datacenter & Cloud.