Is Your Company Ready For Cloud

Practical business cases and techniques to help you understand when cloud investments make sense and when they don't. With decision models that are anchored with practical experiences and lessons to guide your decision making.

How do you start? How should you build a plan for cloud migration for your entire portfolio? How will your organization be affected by these changes? This book, based on real-world cloud experiences by enterprise IT teams, seeks to provide the answers to these questions. Here, you’ll see what makes the cloud so compelling to enterprises; with which applications you should start your cloud journey; how your organization will change, and how skill sets will evolve; how to measure progress; how to think about security, compliance, and business buy-in; and how to exploit the ever-growing feature set that the cloud offers to gain strategic and competitive advantage.

The essential roadmaps for enterprise cloud adoption As cloud technologies continue to challenge the fundamental understanding of how businesses work, smart companies are moving quickly to adapt to a changing set of rules. Adopting the cloud requires a clear roadmap backed by use cases, grounded in practical real-world experience, to show the routes to successful adoption. The Cloud Adoption Playbook helps business and technology leaders in enterprise organizations sort through the options and make the best choices for accelerating cloud adoption and digital transformation. Written by a team of IBM technical executives with a wealth of real-world client experience, this book cuts through the hype, answers your questions, and helps you tailor your cloud adoption and digital transformation journey to the needs of your organization. This book will help you: Discover how the cloud can fulfill major business needs Adopt a standardized Cloud Adoption Framework and understand the key dimensions of cloud adoption and digital transformation Learn how cloud adoption impacts culture, architecture, security, and more Understand the roles of governance, methodology, and how the cloud impacts key players in your organization. Providing a collection of winning plays, championship advice, and real-world examples of successful adoption, this playbook is your ultimate resource for making the cloud work. There has never been a better time to adopt the cloud. Cloud solutions are more numerous and accessible than ever before, and evolving technology is making the cloud more reliable, more secure, and more necessary than ever before. Don’t let your organization be left behind! The Cloud Adoption Playbook gives you the essential guidance you need to make the smart choices that reduce your organizational risk and accelerate your cloud adoption and digital transformation.

Massive, disruptive change is coming to IT as software as a service (SaaS), SOA, mashups, Web 2.0, and cloud computing truly come of age. Now, one of the world’s leading IT innovators explains what it all means—coherently, thoroughly, and authoritatively. Writing for IT executives, architects, and developers alike, world-renowned expert David S. Linthicum explains why the days of managing IT organizations as private fortresses will rapidly disappear as IT inevitably becomes a global community. He demonstrates how to run IT when critical elements of customer, product, and business data and processes extend far beyond the firewall—and how to use all that information to deliver real-time answers about everything from an individual customer’s credit to the location of a specific cargo container. Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise offers a clear-eyed assessment of the challenges associated with this new world—and offers a step-by-step program for getting there with maximum return on investment and minimum risk. Using multiple examples, Linthicum Reviews the powerful cost, value, and risk-related drivers behind the move to cloud computing—and explains why the shift will accelerate Explains the technical underpinnings, supporting technologies, and best-practice methods you’ll need to make the transition Helps you objectively assess the promise of cloud computing and SOA for your organization, quantify value, and make the business case Walks you through evaluating your existing IT infrastructure and finding your most cost-effective, safest path to the “cloud” Shows how to choose the right candidate data, services, and processes for your cloud computing initiatives Guides you through building disruptive infrastructure and next-generation process platforms Helps you bring effective, high-value governance to the clouds If you’re ready to begin driving real competitive advantage from cloud computing, this book is the start-to-finish roadmap you need to make it happen.

The IT sector is full of hype. But once in a while there is a genuine inflection point, a moment at which the way of doing things fundamentally changes due to the introduction of new technologies. The rise of cloud computing is just such an inflection point. Cloud computing is the next stage of the Internet computing model, one in which organizations will consume services, not technologies. These services will be ready to run, available outside the office walls, and be paid for on the basis of usage, just like water or electricity. As the cloud and services model matures, not only will businesses be able to solve old problems more inexpensively and rapidly, they will also be able to address new challenges that were previously out of reach.Cloud computing promises a more flexible services model for IT systems that puts the business unit or end user at the center of the process. In this way, both the IT organization and the business itself become more agile. At the same time, cloud computing promises to reduce the delivered cost of IT through a greater degree of resource utilization, automation, and self service.This will not happen overnight. It will not be next year, nor even within a year or two. But as time passes, more and more companies will find themselves in a position to be able to source services wherever they like: inside the organization or from any provider, whether it be Google, IBM, HP, EMC, Cisco, Microsoft, Amazon, T-Systems or any other cloud computing vendor. This book is a comprehensive introduction to cloud computing and its most prominent enabling technology: virtualization. In the first part, you are guided through the visions, concept and models behind cloud computing. You will learn how your organization can profit from cloud-enabling technologies and how you can incorporate them in your IT infrastructure. Part II of this book consists of Industry Outlooks : in depth articles from industry experts. Part III offers a series of useful case stories, covering a broad diversity of virtualization and cloud-related issues.Further to the development of this book, the development team that is responsible for the content of this book, has developed a certification program on Cloud computing, the Cloud Certification Program. This vendor-neutral Cloud Certification Program provides professionals with the opportunity to obtain globally recognized credentials in cloud computing.The CompTIA Cloud Essentials course Exam is intended for IT professionals who wish to certify that they have the required knowledge and understanding required to complete and pass the CompTIA Cloud Essentials Exam on cloud computing. Anyone who passes this exam to obtains the CompTIA Cloud Essentials Professional certificate.

Get your head—and your business—into the Cloud Cloud computing is no longer just a clever new toy in the world of IT infrastructure. Despite the nebulous name, it’s become a real and important part of our information architecture—and tech professionals who ignore it or try to skim their way through risk falling behind rapidly. The new edition of Cloud Computing For Dummies gets you up to speed fast, clarifying your Cloud options, showing you where can save you time and money, giving you ways to frame your decisions, and helping you avoid weeks of research. In a friendly, easy-to-follow style, Cloud Computing For Dummies, 2nd Edition demystifies the Cloud’s virtual landscape, breaking up a complex and multi-layered topic into simple explanations that will make the various benefits clear and ultimately guide you toward making the most appropriate choices for your organization. Know the business case for the Cloud Understand hybrid and multi-cloud options Develop your Cloud strategy Get tips on best practices The Cloud is everywhere, and it can deliver amazing benefits to our lives and businesses. Get a much clearer vision of exactly how with Cloud Computing For Dummies—and you’ll begin to see that the sky really is the limit!

This invaluable guide addresses the Why, What, and How of enterprise cloud adoption, leveraging a clear framework and proven best practices from Microsoft's own experience. “Great book. What’s particularly impressive is the outline of steps Microsoft itself is taking in its move to the cloud. Do as I do is always more powerful than do as I say.” —Al Ries, Coauthor, War in the Boardroom “This book takes on enterprise cloud adoption to a level I’ve not seen before—made even more elegant with its structured framework and crisp approach.” —Anthony D. Christie, CMO, Level 3 Communications, Former CTO/CIO, Global Crossing “A practical and timely guide that covers the entire journey to the cloud from an enterprise perspective, including business, technology, and organizational impact.” —Bart Luijten, CIO Corporate Functions & Corporate Technology, Philips “The cloud powers business solutions for building tomorrow’s enterprise and this book offers a simple, well-structured, and high-level process map for cloud adoption.” —Kris Gopalakrishnan, Executive Co-Chairman, Infosys Limited Cloud computing is full of tremendous opportunity, but is also riddled with hype and confusion. Business and technology leaders know the cloud is essential, but lack clarity and experience. To the Cloud cuts through the noise and addresses the Why, What, and How of enterprise cloud adoption. The book lays out a four-step framework leveraging the experience and best practices of Microsoft's own IT group. It provides end-to-end business and technology guidance, including how to analyze application portfolios to identify good cloud candidates, choose the right cloud models, consider architecture and security, and understand how shifting operations to the cloud affects budgeting and staffing. The book is applicable to all cloud platforms and providers, and debunks myths in its clear and concise style (e.g., real clouds are more than just web hosting, virtualization, or the Internet itself rebranded). It takes a balanced approach, addressing concerns and hybrid adoption scenarios alike. Leveraging the authors' proven expertise working for Microsoft's CIO on cloud migration and with cloud platform development teams, the book is supported by clear frameworks, graphics, tables, summaries, and checklists to provide a true practitioner’s guide to the cloud. In this book, you will learn how to Explore cloud computing to understand its promise and challenges Envision how cloud computing can transform your organization Enable your organization with the necessary resources and skills Execute the design, development, and operation of cloud workloads To the Cloud is an essential guide for IT professionals seeking to lower total cost of ownership, improve the return on IT investment of existing services, or help the business bring new products to market more quickly.

Despite the buzz surrounding the cloud computing, only a small percentage of organizations have actually deployed this new style of IT—so far. If you're planning your long-term cloud strategy, this practical book provides insider knowledge and actionable real-world lessons regarding planning, design, operations, security, and application transformation. This book teaches business and technology managers how to transition their organization's traditional IT to cloud computing. Rather than yet another book trying to sell or convince readers on the benefits of clouds, this book provides guidance, lessons learned, and best practices on how to design, deploy, operate, and secure an enterprise cloud based on real-world experience. Author James Bond provides useful guidance and best-practice checklists based on his field experience with real customers and cloud providers. You'll view cloud services from the perspective of a consumer and as an owner/operator of an enterprise private or hybrid cloud, and learn valuable lessons from successful and less-than-successful organization use-case scenarios. This is the information every CIO needs in order to make the business and technical decisions to finally execute on their journey to cloud computing. Get updated trends and definitions in cloud computing, deployment models, and for building or buying cloud services Discover challenges in cloud operations and management not foreseen by early adopters Use real-world lessons to plan and build an enterprise private or hybrid cloud Learn how to assess, port, and migrate legacy applications to the cloud Identify security threats and vulnerabilities unique to the cloud Employ a cloud management system for your enterprise (private or multi-provider hybrid) cloud ecosystem Understand the challenges for becoming an IT service broker leveraging the power of the cloud