Every enterprise finds itself in some stage of a cloud migration these days, or cloud transformation, as it's often called. 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 want to take advantage of such capabilities. 

Still, migrating a whole enterprise to the cloud isn't as easy as pushing a button. Migration itself can be a costly endeavor while lifting and shifting legacy applications to the cloud is unlikely to bring the anticipated benefits. At the same time, though, re-architecting applications to run optimally in the cloud is likely to be cost prohibitive and not always a worthwhile investment. So, enterprises need to have a better and more nuanced strategy than just "we're moving to the cloud."

A sound cloud strategy isn't something you can find in a recipe book or copy from another organization. Each organization has a different starting point and has to work under different constraints, both internal and external. In addition, a cloud strategy isn't just a technical strategy. It requires not only a solid understanding of cloud architecture trade-offs but also close alignment between business and IT goals, good decision discipline, and last but not least good communication skills. 

Not quite coincidentally, those are same capabilities that make an architect successful in the enterprise. They are also at the heart of my earlier book 37 Things One Architect Knows About IT Transformation. While 37 Things considered the role of the architect in a broader IT landscape (and an inevitable transformation agenda), this book applies "elevator architect" thinking to cloud architecture and cloud migrations specifically.

Contents

• 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: Moving to the Cloud - There are many ways to the cloud; please choose wisely.
• Part 3: Architecting the Cloud - There's a lot more to cloud architecture than picking the right vendor or product.
• Part 4: Embracing Cloud - To reap the full benefits of cloud, you need to go all in.
• Part 5: Where to from Here - IT never stops, so there's likely to be more.

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