This document discusses enabling technologies for cloud computing, focusing on service oriented architecture and representational state transfer (REST) systems. It describes service oriented architecture as a design approach involving independent services that communicate with each other over a network. It outlines the layered architecture for web services and grids, and compares grids and clouds, noting that grids apply static resources while clouds emphasize elastic resources. It provides a brief overview of REST, describing it as a way to get information content from websites by reading designated web pages containing XML files that describe and include preferred content.