While the theory of hybrid cloud computing is generally well-accepted, making it a reality is a whole other matter. One of the leading theories of the day is that by managing application workloads across virtual machine environments, IT organizations will be able to manage hybrid cloud computing.
But that’s only one piece of the overall hybrid cloud computing equation. The people who build applications have to be conscious that the application is going to be deployed in a hybrid cloud computing scenario. One of the first providers of middleware to address this issue is MuleSoft, which this week made available a private beta of Mule iON, a platform that makes available an enterprise service bus (ESB) and cloud connectors inside a platform-as-a-service offering.
MuleSoft CTO Ross Mason says developers need an easy way to navigate application development across hybrid cloud computing platforms that doesn’t require them master the intricacies of lower-level systems. Mule iON provides a platform that abstracts the complexities of cloud computing in a way that is practical for the people building the actual applications.
As cloud computing develops, it is apparent that not only are applications going to need to be integrated across on-premise and cloud computing platforms, modules within applications are likely to be running on different systems located on various types of cloud computing infrastructure.
Mason says that the inherent advantage that MuleSoft brings to that equation is the lightweight nature of its open source ESB technology, which makes the technology accessible to developers that could never master the intricacies of enterprise-class middleware that won’t scale as easily in the cloud as MuleSoft’s ESB.
Most of the applications running in the cloud today are fairly soloed in that they are generally meant to handle a defined set of tasks. But as business process integration and associated application integration issues come to the cloud, it’s pretty clear that masking the underlying complexities of the cloud from developers is going to be a much bigger priority in 2011.
