Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit

Cloud, SOA, and Applications Overhaul: Powering the Agile Enterprise

This year’s Summit drills down into the three critical building blocks of an applications strategy that effectively meets business’ demands for agility—Cloud, SOA and the overhaul of existing Applications.

Cloud Computing provides the capability to re-imagine and redefine application economics, scalability and productivity. Result: a shift in how IT can contribute to the agility of the enterprise. We also know that SOA is complimentary to Cloud Computing, and a new set of application methodologies, designs and models are necessary to harvest the benefits of these technologies. But these are not the only pieces of the agility puzzle. The legacy application portfolio is itself a major hindrance to agility, and threatens to torpedo any advantage that Cloud and SOA can provide. The enterprise must ask, "Is the current applications portfolio capable of providing the rapid response to business change that we require?" We know that systems that were never designed to be agile become less agile and responsive over time – especially as they go through repeated modifications. The legacy is a time bomb. Defusing it means having the right strategy for Cloud, SOA and the overhaul of existing Applications.