Cloud Computing

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge

by Nayan B. Ruparelia

Why cloud computing represents a paradigm shift for business, and how business users can best take advantage of cloud services.

Most of the information available on cloud computing is either highly technical, with details that are irrelevant to non-technologists, or pure marketing hype, in which the cloud is simply a selling point. This book, however, explains the cloud from the user's viewpoint—the business user's in particular. Nayan Ruparelia explains what the cloud is, when to use it (and when not to), how to select a cloud service, how to integrate it with other technologies, and what the best practices are for using cloud computing.

Cutting through the hype, Ruparelia cites the simple and basic definition of cloud computing from the National Institute of Science and Technology: a model enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Thus with cloud computing, businesses can harness information technology resources usually available only to large enterprises. And this, Ruparelia demonstrates, represents a paradigm shift for business. It will ease funding for startups, alter business plans, and allow big businesses greater agility.

Ruparelia discusses the key issues for any organization considering cloud computing: service level agreements, business service delivery and consumption, finance, legal jurisdiction, security, and social responsibility. He introduces novel concepts made possible by cloud computing: cloud cells, or specialist clouds for specific uses; the personal cloud; the cloud of things; and cloud service exchanges. He examines use case patterns in terms of infrastructure and platform, software information, and business process; and he explains how to transition to a cloud service. Current and future users will find this book an indispensable guide to the cloud.

Genres: Technology, Nonfiction, Business, Science, Computer Science, Technical, Internet

278 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 6, 2016

About the author

Nayan B. Ruparelia is an entrepreneur in London. He has more than thirty years of experience in technology, and from 2007 to 2015 he was Chief Technologist at Hewlett Packard UK.

Reviews

[Fay Wu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Giving this book two stars because I really didn't learn much except what acronyms of _aaS (___ as a service) meant and other terms. I think that this book is probably good if you're trying to understand what people are talking about if you work with these things and you want a laundry list of terms and definitions.... but it really didn't give me any interesting thoughts on cloud computing.
I would give it 1 star except the book isn't written poorly, it's just not written for people like me. Which, to be real, is what the writer did say in the beginning (that this book is more for business people or laypersons).

[Anthony O'Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good introduction

A solid nontechnical introduction to cloud computing. Definitely worth a quick read if you know nothing and want a bit more than a Wikipedia summary. A little unbalanced in places swinging from labouring to define the obvious to extensive details on pricing models. Which I suppose are relevant. The discussion of applications is mostly banal and trivial. It almost always is in books like this. Why? Can’t anyone do this properly?
In the final chapter there is a very interesting, surprisingly succinct and precise summary of the implications of Big Data and Cloud Computing for the democratic process. Spoiler alert. Not good. ( Perfectly obvious already to anyone who hasn’t been asleep for the last half dozen years.)

[BCS · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a small book that packs a lot of punch. It provides a broad comprehensive coverage of all aspects of cloud computing (not just the technical aspects but also the key commercial aspects that differentiate Cloud computing from other outsourcing models) especially the terminology that comes with it. It is forward looking too, covering newly emerging patterns and manifestations of the cloud paradigm.

A good book for introducing the reader to Cloud computing considerations, without diving too deeply into any one area; for that there are other books.

Highly recommended reference book that will point you in the right direction if you need more depth. Its priced about right too.

Review by Adrian Rossi
Originally posted: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/...

[Richard Thompson · Rating 1 out of 5]

The books in the MIT Essential Knowledge series all sound interesting to me, and I have high expectations for anything that carries the MIT brand, but so far they have been disppointing. This book starts with a lot of definitions of jargony terms and then moves on to stupidly obvious business advice about how to make decisions relating to cloud computing implementations. And it felt out of date to me. Most of the implementation choices that were difficult five years ago have been packaged and simplified, and the book didn't even mention how cloud computing relates to the two hot tech topics of today - Web3 and AI.

[Choonghwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the IT industry “cloud” is one of the both most mentioned and most misleading jargon. It is more a concept than a definition, continuously evolving and expanding.

The author has done a great job introducing key concepts of cloud computing and making the book still readable to a layperson like me.

[Abdullah Shams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really high-level overview : mostly meant for decision makers.

Two new layers of Cloud computer that I previously didn't came across and was introduced to here: Business as a service, and information as a service. Both makes a lot of sense to have there own category and could have potential benefits from this particular categorizations.

[Robson Castilho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book which covers Cloud Computing from business/user perspective.
Topics such pricing models, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, INaaS, BPaaS are well-explained with good use cases.
A nice guide to explain Cloud Computing to business people interested in leverage their product/services using the Cloud.

[Venkatesh-Prasad · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is intended for folks who are completely unaware of cloud computing. It just skims the surface on both non-tech and tech fronts of cloud computing listing the common and basic questions pertinent to cloud computing.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good, informative, and interesting book on cloud computing.

I learned quite a lot, for someone who uses the cloud a lot, this detailed the innerworkings of said cloud.

I do have some rain on this cloud though, it was a very dry book.

Would still recommend!

4.0/5

[Martin Nørgaard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright book to describe some services within cloud computing and the general concepts. However, examples were not that good.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is geared toward the managerial/business level and it fills that role well.

[Debashish Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's for business managers and not very useful for IT Architects. But nevertheless does a decent job of covering breadth of topics.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good information but the subject is kind of dull.

[Faoulon · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF.

[Cell · Rating 3 out of 5]

看起來是寫給企業決策者或者是要寫東西給企業決策者看的人的書

[Lars Nettemann · Rating 1 out of 5]

Useless - read the Wikipedia Article on Cloud Computing and you will be better off

[Matt Heavner · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book missed the mark for me. The book is definitely academic, attempting to provide a framework for considering cloud computing. However, I found it was too "down in the weeds" while also not fully fleshed out. The book covered the span of important cloud topics but did not provide the critical knowledge (sorry, gotta pun - this book on clouds was too fluffy..). The impressive looking charts ('models') were better characterized as cartoons. I'm used to hard science models - actual physics-based models used to derive charts (or, better yet here, data from the case studies). However, all the curves (I hate to call them graphs) were "hand drawn" (cartoons, masquerading as technical). This was a mix of cloud computing and business speak. Good bookshelf decoration perhaps, and packaged in a nice small way, so good for reading on the run. But not the go-to reference.

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author starts off with the premise that most people don't understand cloud computing. This is not the case for me as I work in information technology as an IT project manager and have also managed cybersecurity and IT compliance. Part of my job was doing security risk assessments of cloud hosted applications. So . . . with that said, this is a good book and anyone can learn something new from it no matter where you are in the spectrum of cloud computing knowledge.

[Nayan B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great introduction to cloud computing

The book provides a comprehensive introduction to cloud computing and is aimed at a non-technical reader or someone that needs to understand the keys concepts related to the cloud. It covers topics such as data integrity, security, cloud native computing, cloud patterns, best practices and success criteria when transitioning to the cloud, hybrid cloud models, and a future perspective.

[Giulia Paris · Rating 3 out of 5]

not always very organized and would make a nicer read if it shared more real life stories

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid tech agnostic overview of cloud computing ideas and paradigms.

[Paiman Chen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Technology has made this Earth a much smaller place.

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Possibly valuable content rendered incomprehensible by translating bullet point text straight into audio book. The narrative was missing. Keeping focused on the text for more than 5 minutes while driving a car was a chore. That's not what a good audio book should be.