Essentials of cloud computing

Book Preface

Cloud computing is sprawling the IT landscape. Driven by several converging and complementary factors, cloud computing is advancing as a viable IT service delivery model at an incredible pace. It has caused a paradigm shift in how we deliver, use, and harness the variety of IT services it offers. It also offers several benefits compared to traditional on-premise computing models, including reduced costs and increased agility and flexibility. Its transformational potential is huge and impressive, and consequently cloud computing is being adopted by individual users, businesses, educational institutions, governments, and community organizations. It helps close the digital (information) divide. It might even help save our planet by providing an overall greener computing environment.

Hence, corporations are eagerly investing in promising cloud computing technologies and services not only in developed economies but also increasingly in emerging economies—including India, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and South Africa—to address a region’s specific needs. Cloud computing is receiving considerable interest among several stakeholders—businesses, the IT industry, application developers, IT administrators and managers, researchers, and students who aspire to be successful IT professionals.

To successfully embrace this new computing paradigm, however, they need to acquire new cloud computing knowledge and skills. In answer to this, universities have begun to offer new courses on cloud computing. Though there are several books on cloud computing—from basic books intended for general readers to advanced compendium for researchers—there are few books that comprehensively cover a range of cloud computing topics and are particularly intended as an entry-level textbook for university students. This book, Essentials of Cloud Computing, fills this void and is a timely and valuable addition by Professor K. Chandrasekaran, a well-recognized academic and researcher in cloud computing.

The book, beginning with a brief overview on different computing paradigms and potentials of those paradigms, outlines the fundamentals of cloud computing. Then, it deals with cloud services types, cloud deployment models, technologies supporting and driving the cloud, software process models and programming models for cloud, and development of software application that runs the cloud. It also gives an overview of services available from major cloud providers, highlights currently available open source software and tools for cloud deployment, and discusses security concerns and issues in cloud computing. Finally, it outlines advances in cloud computing such as mobile cloud and green cloud. The book’s presentation style supports ease of reading and comprehension. Further, each chapter is supplemented with review questions that help the readers to check their understanding of topics and issues explored in the chapter.

Cloud computing is here to stay, and its adoption will be widespread. It will transform not only the IT industry but also every sector of society. A wide range of people—application developers, enterprise IT architects and administrators, and future IT professionals and managers—will need to learn about cloud computing and how it can be deployed for a variety of applications. This concise and comprehensive book will help readers understand several key aspects of cloud computing—technologies, models, cloud services currently available, applications that are better suited for cloud, and more. It will also help them examine the issues and challenges and develop and deploy applications in clouds.

I believe you will find the book informative, concise, comprehensive, and helpful to gain cloud knowledge.