Here it is ... the bestseller now greatly expanded to reveal the most important Cloud innovations for 2014 and revised in response to reader requests and comments. This new, 29000-word edition incorporates coverage of such late-breaking tools and programs as IBM's SoftLayer Integration, Storwize V5000, PureFlex and PureData for Analytics … Microsoft's new “Cloud OS” for facilitating hybrid installations … Microsoft's Windows Azure Pack for off-the-shelf, “cloud-in-a-box” implementation … and Red Hat CloudForms 3.0 and RHEV 3.3. For the first time, the book also includes an eloquent introduction to the fundamentals and history of the Hadoop platform: the heart of all Big Data processing in the Cloud environment.
Lars Nielsen's jargon-free guide fully explains the state-of-the-art (and the state of the industry) in Cloud Computing. Using completely user-friendly language that assumes no prior knowledge, noted systems developer Lars Nielsen describes the most vital fundamentals of Cloud Computing - that powerful approach to enterprise systems by which today's smart organizations cut costs while still maintaining access to all the digital capacity they need.
Nielsen explains tested, effective strategies for maximizing the latest Cloud Computing tools and economies, putting them to work for your organization. He also provides a vivid snapshot of the major industry players, surveys current trends in the Cloud marketplace, and lays out vital issues of Cloud security.
This was a decent overview of the services out there, in one way. LIke it's good to sort of get your head around what Red Hat or VMWare is offering, and I have to say, Windows Azure seemed strangely kind of awesome. But in another way it's not particularly useful. Like it doesn't really help you understand what you can DO in the cloud, except only in abstract terms. But really its biggest failing is its over-reliance on PR releases and quotes. It feels very cobbled together. And then it sort of advertises that it was updated in the wake of the amazon crash, but all it really did was tell you there was a crash, so, hey, watch out!
I dunno, it's probably me. I am looking for a specific type of cloud computing book, but everything I can find is either too zeitgeisty, academic, or "move your business into the cloud" ish. This one is mostly the latter.
This is largely a compilation of what cloud service vendors say about themselves. It's useful in the sense that the author has taken the trouble to identify the services and piece together their collateral. It makes no attempt to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses or appropriate uses of the different approaches or of cloud computing as a whole.
If you want a general non technical overview of what popular public clouds have to offer and don't feel like googling them one at a time... then this is the book for you.