"A sound strategy is the difference between making a wish and making it come true. Stop having cloud wishes and define a cloud strategy."

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Cloud computing is an amazing resource that can provide fully managed platforms, auto-optimizing and even auto-healing operations, per-second billing, pre-trained machine learning models, and globally distributed transactional data stores. So, it's no wonder that most enterprises are engaging in a cloud migration or cloud transformation, as it's often called. . 

Migrating a whole enterprise to the cloud isn't as easy as pushing a button. Simply lifting and shifting legacy applications to the cloud is unlikely to bring the anticipated benefits whereas re-architecting applications to run optimally in the cloud is likely to be cost prohibitive and not a worthwhile investment. So, enterprises need to have a better and more nuanced strategy than just "cloud first!"

A Decision-based Approach to Cloud Strategy

A sound cloud strategy isn't something you can copy-paste from a recipe book or from another organization. Each organization has a different starting point and works under different constraints and objectives. In addition, a cloud strategy doesn't just deal with technical change but also requires close alignment between business and IT goals.

Unfortunately, most books on cloud computing either stay at a very high level or describe specific vendors and products. This book fills this gap by taking a fresh look at cloud computing and providing decision models to lay out a nuanced migration journey.

Contents

Based on real-life experience taking large organizations to the cloud, 30 Chapters focus on options, decisions, and trade-offs - the core elements of any strategy:

• Part 1: Understanding the Cloud - Cloud is very different from traditional IT procurement, so you'll have to rethink the way your IT works.
• Part 2: Organizing for the Cloud - Cloud impacts more than your tech landscape.
• Part 3: Moving to the Cloud - There are many ways to the cloud; please choose wisely.
• Part 4: Architecting the Cloud - Look beyond products and buzzword and instead use rational decision models.
• Part 5: Building for the Cloud - The cloud is a formidable platform, but applications running on top of it need to do their part, also.
• Part 6: Embracing Cloud - To reap the full benefits of cloud, you need to go all in