Always-on enterprise information systems with service oriented architecture and load balancing

Abstract

In today's world, it is essential for a business to provide a seamless and continuous service to its customers. Such an always-on service is required, not only for the strong competitive environment but also because of the fact that most the customers also have to offer seamless and continuous service to their own customers. In this chain, failure of one of the systems even for a short time can result in a disaster in the entire service chain. A wise approach to provide a continuous service should consider all possible failure areas in a computer-based information system. Since hardware and software are vulnerable to a myriad of problems that can halt the normal operation of a system, an ideal solution should not only consider both of these two components, but also should seek to find ways for them to work in support of each other against a malfunction. This chapter is an attempt to develop a model that provides this functionality. Service oriented architecture (SOA) is implemented in the model due to its tenets that are suitable for such functionality. © 2010, IGI Global.