Author: R. Chopra
Publisher: Mercury
Pages: 200
ISBN: 978-1683920922
Print: 1683920929
Kindle: B06XXPSY7T
Audience: Would-be cloud users
Rating: 4
Reviewer: Kay Ewbank

This overview of cloud computing does a good job of introducing the concepts and products used in cloud computing. It's not aimed at developers, but would be a good book to recommend to managers who need to understand what cloud computing means.

The book is written for 'self learning', and the author says he wants you to feel he's sitting behind you and guiding you. He admits there are other books that cover the same material, but says he put his effort into making this book easy to read, and to be fair to him, it does seem to fulfil that aim. Each chapter ends with a set of conceptual short questions with answers, along with a number of chapter review questions, so you can judge whether you've understood the topics.

The book starts with an introduction discussing how cloud computing has evolved, the hardware requirements, issues and challenges. A chapter on cloud computing architectures is next, with descriptions of service models, deployment models, standards, scalability and fault tolerance, and security.

Virtualization is the next topic to be covered, with info on cloud data centers, cloud governance, some aspects of specific software such as Map Reduce and VMWare, and security. 

A short chapter on advanced cloud applications discusses direct I/O access, load-balanced virtual switches, and federated clouds, after which a chapter on enterprise cloud computing starts with a discussion on data and process (mainly OLAP and OLTP), then moves on to cloud consumption strategies, adoption strategies, and the different types of application software - ERP, SCM and CRM. 

The book closes with a chapter of case studies looking at using software such as Azure, AWS, Hadoop, Map Reduce, and Google App Engine. 

Overall, this is a well written book. It sometimes seems to change levels from high level overview to specific details, and some of the choices of software and products that are mentioned left me wondering why x was in and no mention of y, but that may be a measure of how fast cloud computing is changing. I'd still say it's a reasonable read for someone wanting a basic grasp of cloud computing.

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