Book Authors:-  Jothy Rosenberg, Arthur Mateos

Book Publisher:-   Manning, USA                  

                Cloud computing is the smart combination of several proven and potential enterprise-scale information technologies. Predominantly the elegant and enlightening cloud concepts lead to robust and resilient server clusters, composites, grids, meshes, fabrics, etc for fulfilling the hard-to-crack non-functional (quality) characteristics (dynamic elasticity, scalability, availability, productivity, agility, affordability, affability, amenability, dependability, sustainability etc.) and criteria. The advanced compute farm resulting out of the cloud adoption facilitates the quick and easy hosting of a slew of development, execution, middleware, mash-up, management and modernization platforms, which in turn simplifies and streamlines the building, assembling, deploying and delivering enterprise applications and services, which can be supplied for global users for free or for a small fee. That is, all kinds of cloud infrastructures are being strengthened and positioned for producing, putting and providing next-generation service systems. In a way, cloud computing is a stimulating and scintillating phenomenon for unearthing a series of IT innovations, inventions and improvisations. Newer and nimbler business, pricing, consumption models are set to emerge and evolve. Cloud-enablement will become a serious and strategic business case. Cloud service providers (CSPs) will erupt and look out for fresh avenues for earning and sustaining extra revenues. On-demand computing targets can be easily met with the maturity of cloud platforms and infrastructures. Computing will become the fifth social utility. Pay-as-you-go model will become the key usage-based pricing model.   

                  In short, cloud infrastructures are shared, virtualised, automated and pooled compute servers. In other words, as enterprises are looking forward for dynamic, consolidated, converged, and adaptive infrastructures for IT and business alignment, enablement, enlightenment, and empowerment, the emergence of cloud computing is being viewed as the blessing and boon for individuals, innovators, and institutions to embrace the cloud style in style to embark on the next-generation computing and to produce the next wave of personal as well as professional applications and people-centric services. Consolidation and virtualization play a strategic and significant role in taking the pioneering and path-breaking cloud paradigm forward. Service integration, composition and collaboration will become easier. The complex job scheduling, system diagnosis, load identification and balancing, resource allocation, de-allocation and reallocation, resource management and provisioning tasks are being compactly and completely automated so that the need for error-prone human intervention, instruction and interpretation are completely taken off.

 The Intended Audience for this Book - This book is mainly for business managers, IT managers, IT architects, CIOs, CTOs, CEOs, IT strategy decision-makers, and all potential cloud services buyers. Though there are source codes in some of the chapters, programmers may not find this book handy. The principal intention is to supply the cloud-centric trends, directions, technologies, processes, platforms, practices, patterns and processes etc.

                   Chapter 1, “What is cloud computing?” provides a general overview of the concepts of cloud computing. It touches briefly on the evolution of cloud computing and the growing importance of cloud computing as a boon for enterprises. 

                 Chapter 2, “Understanding cloud computing classifications,” provides an understanding of the technological underpinnings of cloud computing. It presents a framework for understanding the various types of cloud providers and gives an overview of their capabilities. It ends with a brief discussion on how to choose a cloud provider.

                  Chapter 3, “The business case for cloud computing,” discusses the economic implications of cloud-based computing. It starts with a simplified comparison of different implementation models. Next, we look at specific examples of the cost benefit/ROI of cloud-based implementations for different sizes of organizations.

                   Chapter 4, “Security and the private cloud,” deals with the number-one issue preventing people from adopting the cloud: security. The primary question is, “Will my data be safe?” The short answer is that security will be as much up to your policies, procedures, and careful software engineering as it ever was. Yes, in some (rare) instances, there is zero room for mistakes (for example, data related to national security), and a private cloud is warranted. As a step toward full public-cloud computing, some large enterprises are turning their existing (sunk-cost) data centers into private clouds. Why do they want to do this? Is it a good idea? 

                  Chapter 5, “Designing and architecting for cloud scale,” discusses the unique aspects of high-scale applications and how to design and architect them so they can handle the full onslaught of the entire world using your application. 

                  Chapter 6, “Achieving high reliability at cloud scale,” covers topics related to using cheap hardware in high volumes and how to deal with the expected failures of such hardware gracefully while continuing to give good service to a potentially huge number of users.

                   Chapter 7, “Testing, deployment, and operations in the cloud,” relates to the fact that the cloud represents a different environment in which to operate from the way things are done in internal IT data centers. This chapter discusses those differences in the areas of how applications are tested, deployed, and then operated in a production scenario.

                  Chapter 8, “Practical considerations,” looks at the practical considerations involved in running successful applications in the cloud. Beginning with the technical and business challenges that you must consider, it moves on to a discussion of the most important operational issues. 

                Chapter 9, “Cloud 9: the future of the cloud,” discusses the future evolution of cloud computing and forecasts how the technology will evolve over the next two decades.

                  This book covers a lot about the humble beginning, the evolution, and the future of cloud computing, the hottest buzzword in the industry and academic circles. The details about the cloud bursting architecture are really informative, inspiring and instigating. The business cases are very well illustrated, illuminated and inscribed so that all the lingering myths and doubts of business entrepreneurs and executives get fully removed. The concerns and challenges are described in a simple manner so that researchers can think of good solutions. Clouds will be the common, core and central part and portion of our everyday life in the days to unfold. Definitely and diligently this book reveals and revels on the exploding cloud pie. I strongly recommend this book for business and IT managers, leaders and consultants. Another noteworthy point is that authors are eloquent in English and could convey unambiguously what they intended to tell to the perspective readers.  

Reviewer

 Pethuru Raj PhD

Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI) Ltd,

L7-A043, Gold Hill Square, Bommanahalli,

Bangalore, 560068, India

Home Page: www.boschresearch.com

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