Cloud as a Service: Understanding the Service Innovation Ecosystem

This book uses principles of Service Science to explain the dynamics driving the adoption of cloud computing in the industry.

Cloud as Service covers that evolution of enterprise computing platforms to application-specific cloud platforms or ASCPs aligned to business needs. This book also covers processes for developing and building ASCPs while also providing insight to executives, managers and technologists in corporations, large and small using or delivering cloud services, cloud service providers as well as equipment manufacturers and software and application vendors participating in cloud supply chains.

For business, the appeal of cloud computing must go beyond the notion of convenient, on-demand access of networked pooled access to computing resources. Industry leaders have learned to apply cloud computing to become more nimble, cost effective, and customer engaging as they strive for competitive advantage regardless of size. These companies define and build cloud platforms customized for their needs rather than using someone else’s.

Business have a holistic, end-to-end view of platform planning, platform development, supply chains and operations and are able to collapse platform development times to a fraction of the original time. These companies also understand that strategies for selling to the cloud market are essentially incomplete; and that in order to be successful they must become cloud service businesses themselves, incorporating cloud technologies in their engineering, IT, sales and marketing, and delivery processes.

What You’ll Learn

• Historical perspective to provide insight into the dynamics driving cloud evolution today
• State of the art in IT requirements and cloud solutions
• The value of User Experience (UX) driven design principles
• The crucial roles of Service Brokers and Service Assurance Managers
• The landscape of emerging cloud services and what they mean to your enterprise
• Service Portals and Enterprise Service Buses

Who This Book Is For

The readership comprises CIOs, CTOs, data center architects, solution architects and application engineers trying to get a grip and understand a rapidly changing industry. Educational institutions building a systems integration curriculum might find this book useful as a reference. Developers may want to go through this book to understand how their work fits in the cloud ecosystem.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Cloud Computing as a Service
Chapter 2: The Service Science Foundation for Cloud Computing
Chapter 3: Cloud Computing: Implications for Service Transformation
Chapter 4: Evolution of Cloud Server Platforms
Chapter 5: Application-Specific Cloud Platforms
Chapter 6: Building Application-Specific Platforms
Chapter 7: Bare Metal Clouds
Chapter 8: Service Strategy and Examples
Chapter 9: Cloud as a Service Evolution