Pearson Cloud Computing: Concepts, Technology & Architecture

I've purchased this book for one of my university course. If you are keen on learning more about Cloud computing I'd recommend this book.

I was hoping to start a project to write an Application for the Cloud. I don't think this book is really suitable for that, unfortunately for me - is there any book out there that is?? And yet, it is a worthwhile read. I should mention I have only read the opening chapters.

All as described. No complaints with book. Would recommend it for anyone. A good book to have for any data communications college courses

A book that provides clarity on this topic. Provides readers with a simple overview and slowly engages the more complex topics.

Knowing the ICT history and its milestones – mainframes, minis, proprietary system network architectures, micros and workstations, CISC/RISC technologies with their operating systems, database/data communications software, data center services, middleware, application software solutions, internet, LAN/WAN, worldwide web, e- business, smartphones, outsourcing incl. offshoring concepts and services, web 2.0 etc. – I wanted to better understand what is behind the term “cloud computing”.This book is written for: “IT practitioners and professionals, IT managers and decision makers, professors and students and educational institutions, business managers, technology architects and developers.” (Page 4).I do not know why the authors did not mention ICT and Business Management Consultants who provide important services for Cloud Computing candidates and customers.This excellent book was very revealing. It starts with a very short overview of the ICT milestones ending with the statement on page 27 “It wasn’t until 2006 that the term “cloud computing” emerged in the commercial arena. It was during this time that Amazon launched its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) services that enabled organizations to “lease” computing capacity and processing power to run their enterprise applications. Google Apps also began providing browser-based enterprise applications in the same year, and three years later, the Google App Engine became another historic milestone.”Then the authors provide definitions published by Gartner, Forrester Research, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and by the authors themselves: “Cloud computing is a specialized form of distributed computing that introduces utilization models for remotely provisioning scalable and measured resources.”In this chapter 3 readers find Business Drivers, Technology Innovations, Basic Concepts and Terminology, Goals and Benefits, Risks and ChallengesChapter 4 provides Fundamental Concepts and Models, in Chapter 5 we find the Cloud Enabling Technology, Chapter 6 covers Fundamental Cloud Security, which are followed by Part II explaining Cloud Computing Mechanisms, Part III Cloud Computing Architecture, Part IV Working with Clouds and Part V with 7 Appendices not less important than the aforementioned chapters and Parts I-III.The authors describe strengths, challenges and risks when users want to introduce and apply cloud computing with a bias towards cloud computing compared to in-house resp. on-site computing.When they compare costs of cloud computing with costs of on-site computing it is not evident if the latter is already based on cost savings and quality improvements achieved through outsourcing and offshoring. In most of these – few and relatively simple - examples the cloud computing costs are significantly below the total cost of on-site resp. in-house computing.In my view the risks and exposures of cloud computing are mentioned in this book, however the superficially informed decision maker is not sufficiently sensitized when complex moves to cloud computing are at stake.C-Level decision makers should not delegate the decision to ICT managers without understanding the areas of Service Level Agreements, the core of the contracts with the cloud computing providers, security issues, billing mechanisms, legally executable rights, etc. etc. All details in the chapters 14: Cloud Delivery Model Considerations, 15: Cost Metrics and Pricing Models and 16: Service Quality Metrics and SLAs (all in Part IV) must be analyzed, checked and evaluated before C-Level executives make an informed decision. I am sure that ICT managers and especially CIOs support this view when they prepare a cloud computing business case for CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CMOs and CSOs (Marketing and Sales Executives) without irritating them with techno-language and acronyms.Cloud computing today is a very wide, complex, dynamic and highly competitive field, many terms are proprietary, invented and coined by cloud service providers, sometimes difficult to understand and to compare, therefore clear definitions of terms are very important.Especially important is the section 16.3 SLA Guidelines (Pages 413-415 in chapter 16); the authors among other things are “considering independent SLA Monitoring … it may be in the best interest of a cloud consumer to hire a third-party organization” which brings me back to my observation that they do not mention ICT and Business Management Consultants as a target group for this book.The book does not reveal any information about the size of the cloud computing market, the players, market shares, rankings etc.There is some room for improvement – see above; an appendix with all the acronyms in this book with definitions and explanations is necessary, because it is annoying to find unexplained acronyms. Readers not familiar with the many acronyms need to google resp. consult Wikipedia what should be avoided.Despite some room for improvements, I gave this book five stars because in my mind it is currently the best, most detailed and neutral book (not favoring any provider) I could find on the market.With the graphics and the possibility to view over 260 diagrams online and download them the authors provide an outstanding service to the reader resp. the customer; thus I consider the book as excellent.