Class overview :

Class goals :

• Comparing and contrasting the available delivery models of cloud computing
• Evaluating the benefits of cloud products, including Salesforce.com, Microsoft Azure, Google, and Amazon EC2
• Deploying Software as a Service (SaaS) to optimize productivity and collaboration
• Leveraging Platform as a Service (PaaS) to streamline application deployment
• Examining the cost benefits of deploying Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Integrating multivendor cloud products and services

Content of Cloud Computing Overview: Evaluating the Opportunities

Cloud Computing: Defining a New Strategy for IT Delivery

Exploring the cloud computing landscape

• Defining cloud computing
• The benefits of cloud computing
• Cloud computing components

Cloud computing delivery models

• Analyzing the types of clouds: public, private, hybrid, community
• Layering cloud services to create a coherent architecture

Integrating Software as a Service (SaaS) for Maximum Business Impact

Defining SaaS

• Exploiting access anywhere software
• Exploring best practices of the SaaS delivery model

Benefitting from SaaS

• Minimizing administration costs
• Improving productivity and collaboration
• Replacing capital investments with pay-per-use

Live, in-class demonstrations

• Capturing, analyzing and presenting data in real time with SaaS
• Managing customer relationships with Salesforce.com

Improving Application Delivery with Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Employing PaaS

• Leveraging off-premise execution platforms
• Instantaneous provisioning
• Achieving transparent application scalability
• Exploiting prepackaged configurations with Windows Azure and the Google App Engine

Live, in-class demonstrations

• Deploying applications to the Google App Engine for dynamic scalability
• Hosting ASP.NET data-driven applications in the Windows Azure cloud

Achieving Organizational Agility with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Implementing IaaS

• Leveraging on-demand servers
• Eliminating software license costs with preconfigured servers
• Migrating existing machine images to the cloud
• Cost-effective, scalable and reliable data storage with Amazon Simple Storage Solution (S3)

Minimizing risk to your organization

• Immediate response to market demands
• Elastically scaling infrastructure capacity to meet organizational demands
• Evaluating operating systems and software with pay-per-use

Live, in-class demonstration

• Instantaneous server provisioning with Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2)

Examining Potential Barriers to Adopting the Cloud

Highlighting security implications in the cloud

• Analyzing security concerns
• Maintaining privacy of proprietary data
• Achieving acceptable reliability and service-level agreements

Maintaining business continuity

• Avoiding vendor lock-in
• Exploiting multiple cloud providers for cross-platform interoperability
• Evaluating the impact on employee skill requirements

Live, in-class demonstration

• Integrating the best of cloud vendor offerings into one customized solution

Moving Forward to Cloud Adoption

Taking the next steps to implement cloud computing in your organization

• Building a business case
• Selecting a pilot project

Forecasting the cloud

• Tracking cloud trends and vendor solutions
• Monitoring emerging standards and regulations