Cloud Computing is an emerging style of IT delivery in which applications, data, and IT resources are rapidly provisioned and provided as standardised offerings to users over the web in a flexible pricing model.

At a recent conference where I presented on the current state of Cloud Computing, I was pleasantly surprised at the level of genuine interest given the current low investment situation in which most companies find themselves.

Organizations are moving applications and infrastructure to servers on the Internet at an increasingly rapid rate and Cloud Computing – or whatever you call it – is changing the way people access information as well as they way they work and play. That is making the term ”Cloud Computing” more ubiquitous. Yet, as often happens with emerging technology waves, it is also making the term more confusing and vague.

Migrating to an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a bigger decision than many companies realize. It creates the opportunity for central management and access points for all the services available in the enterprise. When determining the need and the method for enabling an ESB for services, there are several important considerations. The ESB can act as a simple access point in terms of acting as a proxy to hosted web services; it can orchestrate calls to many web services through languages like BPEL, and it can also house the web service code itself.