SOA AND VIRTUALIZATION

virtualization is a broad term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources.

It can be defined as a technique for hiding the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources. This includes making a single physical resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application, or storage device) appear to function as multiple logical resources; or it can include making multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) appear as a single logical resource.

Virualization and SOA

Virtualization and SOA are a very good match. As companies ramp up their SOA deployments, a couple of things are happening.

MODEL 1

First, a lot of them are going to the outsource model, Software as a Service, the SaaS model. Companies are deploying infrastructure for that. That particular deployment model lends itself to virtualization because you can imagine the data center that is hosting all the different services as they bring more customers in and have different peak times for their services, you see how beneficial virtualization can be because you can ramp on and off and add virtual devices as required and take them down as required. So that's a model that makes sense.

MODEL 2 

The other model that we're seeing is inside the organization. This is not a hosting company, but an actual SOA user. As they increase the deployment footprint, they're starting to realize that with reuse you need to virtualize these services to give the IT department a little more flexibility and a little more control over who runs what where and how it's managed, so they don't have 15 different boxes on 15 different racks running these same services. So virtualization provides more control within organizations.