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| OSBF’s Live Demo Solution Brings SOA and Security into the Cloud The Interoperability project group of Open Source Business Foundation e.V., the European business network for the open source sector, presented at CeBIT on March 3, 2009, a jointly developed platform for secure cloud computing. The Internet Service Bus (ISB) demonstrates how different applications can be combined to form platform-neutral services and be used securely. For the first time the Internet Service Bus shows, moreover, how concepts of service-oriented architecture can serve as a basis for cloud computing. It is in this context that the Identity Network Service (INS) offers the necessary security. For the first time ever, the INS permits secure online authentication and authorization by single sign-on – also in cloud environments. For private and B2B users alike, the project not only points out specific application scenarios for cloud computing. It also provides software manufacturers, integrators and hosters with an important technology module that offers the possibility of new, cloud-based business models. The development consortium of the OSBF Interoperability project group consists of 1&1, Corisecio, Microsoft, Open-Xchange and Sopera. Andreas Hartl, head of the OSBF Interoperability project group and Director of Platform Strategy at Microsoft Deutschland GmbH, explains: "Cloud computing is the future. That's why, when we launched our project group in summer 2008, we defined two projects – ISB and INS – both of which focus squarely on customer requirements. The Internet Service Bus makes it possible, for the first time, for services of different producers in the cloud to communicate with one another. And the Identity Network Service allows users to access a number of combined services with a single sign-on to the cloud. The project group's work points the way to the future of cloud computing." An online demo presented live by the project group at CeBIT shows how one web application is sufficient to administer patient data, securely, from different sources. To ensure that personal data is protected, authorized nursing staff are given specific access to individual datasets. To this end the Internet Service Bus, which is based on the open source platform of German SOA specialist Sopera, creates a bridge between the Java and the .NET world: it integrates the applications Open-Xchange, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Virtual Earth to form one web-browser. All this is completely transparent for users and application developers, making technical know-how unnecessary. Furthermore, the ISB platform is flexible, scalable and competitively priced. At the same time, providers of online applications and services find themselves presented with new sales opportunities in the form, say, of pay-per-use models. Well-known analysts such as Gartner and IDC forecast massive growth in cloud computing in the years ahead. With the Internet Service Bus as a transparent, open source-based middleware and the Identity Network Service as a secure authentication and authorization solution, the development consortium of the OSBF Interoperability project group has come up with a future-oriented platform for this growth market. The ISB combines the approaches of service-oriented architecture and of cloud computing in a reliable and effective manner. write your comments about the article :: © 2009 Computing News :: home page |