David Linthicum published a recent article in eBizQ noting the Rise of Cloud Governance. As CTO of Blue Mountain Labs, Dave is in a good position to see industry trends take shape. Lately he’s been noticing a growing interest in cloud management and governance tools. In his own words:
This is a huge hole that cloud computing has had. Indeed, without strong governance and management strategy, and enabling technology, the path to cloud computing won’t be possible.
It’s nice to see that he explicitly names Layer 7 Technologies as one of the companies that is offering solutions today for Cloud Governance.
It turns out that cloud governance, while a logical evolution of SOA governance, has a number of unique characteristics all its own. One of these is the re-distribution of roles and responsibilities around provisioning, security, and operations. Self-service is a defining attribute of cloud computing. Cloud governance solutions need to embrace this and provide value not just for administrators, but for the users who take on a much more active role in the full life cycle of their applications.
Effective cloud governance promotes agility, not bureaucracy. And by extension, good cloud governance solutions should acknowledge the new roles and solve the new problems cloud users face.
K. Scott Morrison's Blog 