Cloud Strategy
Cloud Strategy
A Decision-Based Approach to Successful Cloud Migration
About the Book
Most books on cloud computing either stay at a very high level, telling you that you should become “digital” or ”agile”, or dive into specific vendors and product details. This book closes this gap. It’ll help you ask the right questions and unravel existing assumptions to define a cloud strategy that’s based on meaningful decisions. It condenses my experience developing cloud strategies for large organizations into 32 self-contained chapters that cover IT strategy, architecture, financials, and organizational changes.
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A Decision-based Approach to Cloud Strategy
A strategy isn't something you can copy-paste from a recipe book or from another organization. Diverse starting points, objectives, and constraints imply different choices and trade-offs. In addition, a cloud strategy doesn't just consider technical change but also includes close alignment across business, organization, and technology. This book questions existing assumptions ("Running software you didn't build is a bad deal") and presents technology-neutral decision models ("8 ways to slice the hybrid cloud") ideally suited to defining and communicating a well-thought-out migration journey.
Contents
Based on the author's extensive experience taking large organizations to the cloud, 32 Chapters highlight options, decisions, and trade-offs - the core elements of any strategy. These mental models come to life in real-life anecdotes and examples:
- 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 buzzwords for rational decision models.
- Part 5: Building for the Cloud - Applications running on the cloud need to do their part, also.
- Part 6: Budgeting the Cloud - Cloud can significantly reduce your operational costs—if you leave existing assumptions behind.
This is the guide that you're going to want to have by your side for your cloud journey. It applies the mindset of “The Software Architect Elevator” (my prior book) to cloud computing.
Reader Feedback
This book currently enjoys a 4.7 star rating on Goodreads. Thanks go to all early readers who made the book better by providing feedback during the writing process.
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About the Contributors
Jean-Francois Landreau is leading the infrastructure team at Allianz Direct, the new brand for the direct insurance business of Allianz.
When the excitement moved from the development toward the operations with the emergence of the SRE and devops trend, he followed the same path.
He is a strong believer that you can't take enlightened enterprise decisions if you are too far away from the machine room.

Michele Danieli is the Head of Architecture Practice at Allianz Technology Global Lines & North America Customer Solution Group. He leads globally distributed architecture teams building platforms.
He started his career in the engine room and sees architecture and engineers as best friends. A good diagram and a mind map are essential tools and code is not a foe. Traveling the elevator is building bold visions with pragmatic targets as nothing beats running code; but stable and scalable running code is always better.

Tahir Hashmi has developed large-scale distributed applications at internet businesses serving more than 100 million users, like Flipkart, Zynga, Yahoo, and most recently, Tokopedia, where he now leads the technology strategy as vice president and technical fellow. His mission is to make distributed cloud computing as simple as writing a program on the laptop.
Reader Testimonials
Victor Chircu
Senior Architect
This is great book (as I've come to expect from Gregor Hohpe!). The author has a way of transforming tons of experience and complexity into practical and useful decision models. It certainly gave me several different lenses through which to analyze the cloud.
Wu Xia
Head of Service Incubation, UOB
I wish this book existed 2 years ago. My personal experience in enterprise cloud adoption resonates much with various sections in this book. Deliberately maintaining a cloud service provider neutral narrative, much arguments, metaphors, examples, do’s and don’s in the book sound unusually convincing as they reflect the reality I observe on the ground. A much needed guidance for those genuinely look for sustainable value realization from cloud.

Henry Suryawirawan
Tech Lead Journal Podcast Host
A comprehensive guide to Cloud and the strategies to adopting and implementing it optimally. Written in an approachable language, it covers the end-to-end cloud journey, including understanding the Cloud concept and its implications, migration, architecture, software build & design, and how to embrace the Cloud lifestyle.
Table of Contents
-
- About This Book
-
Part I: Understanding the Cloud
- 1 Cloud Isn’t IT Procurement; It’s a Lifestyle Change
- 2 Cloud Thinks in the First Derivative
- 3 Wishful Thinking Isn’t a Strategy
- 4 Principle-Powered Decision Discipline
- 5 If You Don’t Know How to Drive…
-
Part II: Organizing for the Cloud
- 6 Cloud Is Outsourcing
- 7 The Cloud Turns Your Organization Sideways
- 8 Retain / Re-Skill / Replace / Retire
- 9 Don’t Hire a Digital Hitman
- 10 Enterprise Architecture in the Cloud
-
Part III: Moving to the Cloud
- 11 Why Exactly Are You Going to the Cloud, Again?
- 12 No One Wants a Server
- 13 Don’t Run Software You Didn’t Build
- 14 Don’t Build an Enterprise Non-Cloud!
- 15 Cloud Migration: How Not to Get Lost
- 16 Cloud Migration per Pythagoras
- 17 Value Is the Only Real Progress
-
Part IV: Architecting the Cloud
- 18 Multicloud: You’ve Got Options
- 19 Hybrid Cloud: Slicing the Elephant
- 20 The Cloud—Now on Your Premises
- 21 Don’t Get Locked Up Into Avoiding Lock-In
- 22 The End of Multitenancy?
- 23 The New “ility”: Disposability
-
Part V: Building (for) the Cloud
- 24 The Application-Centric Cloud
- 25 What Do Containers Contain?
- 26 Serverless = Worry Less?
- 27 Cloud Applications Like FROSST
- 28 IaaC - Infrastructure as actual Code
- 29 Keep Calm And Operate On
-
Part VI: Budgeting the Cloud
- 30 Cloud Savings Have to Be Earned
- 31 It’s Time to Increase Your “Run” Budget
- 32 Automation Isn’t About Efficiency
- 33 Beware the Supermarket Effect!
- Author Biography
- Notes
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