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The Cutter Consortium report The Truth About Cloud Computing: Adoption Strategies, Security, and Reliability delivers a comprehensive assessment of cloud computing's actual strengths, weaknesses, benefits, and risks. You receive 258 pages packed with balanced insight and opinion, presented by a diverse group of industry experts, real-world practitioners and cutting-edge service providers. You gather the expertise you need to determine where (or if) cloud computing fits in your firm's overall business-technology strategy and how to begin the adoption process.

This report will help you:

• Gain a greater understanding of the cloud computing environment so that you may make more rapid decisions
• Think strategically, not tactically, about how your organization wants to leverage technology
• Launch a traditional due diligence process to determine your cloud computing adoption strategy
• Leverage cloud computing to reduce hardware and application software maintenance and update issues
• Identify opportunities to mix and match services
• Discover why -- contrary to popular belief -- cloud computing's security benefits outweigh its security risks
• Dispel the eight common myths regarding software-as-a-service
• Avoid purchasing servers, software, data center space, or network equipment, instead buying these resources as a lower-cost, fully outsourced service
• Scale on-demand to meet peak and uncertain computing demands

Table of Contents

Introduction: Cloud Computing -- IT's Day in the Sun? by San Murugesan.

Chapter 1: Seeing Through the Fog -- The Language, Claims, Myths, and Realities of Cloud Computing by Jeffrey J. Hardy. Understand what cloud computing is and what it is not. Cast a skeptical eye on some of the claims made for cloud computing.

Chapter 2: Clearing Up the Cloud -- Adoption Strategies for Cloud Computing by Ed Reynolds and Charles E. Bess. Outline a cloud solution and discover four broad strategies your organization can use to embrace cloud computing.

Chapter 3: Making the Cloud Case -- Building the Right IT Infrastructure Services by Beth Cohen. Create a successful infrastructure that integrates all the required services seamlessly to the end user.

Chapter 4: Cloud as a Service Delivery Platform -- The Must-Haves for Getting to Value by Jason Liu. Explore how a leading telecommunications service provider is using a cloud enablement platform to bring a variety of new services to the market.

Chapter 5: Entering the Cloud -- Phased Adoption to Computing Nirvana by Steve Andriole. Rethink core competency, sourcing strategies, technology funding, and the role that technology should play in your company, by adopting a 5-step cloud computing implementation plan.

Chapter 6: Security Dynamics of Cloud Computing by Khaled M. Khan. Analyze the cloud computing security requirements of different types of stakeholders and address the security challenges.

Chapter 7: Managing Compliance and Security for Cloud Computing by Jim Hietala and Mark Willoughby. Gain strategies for managing the various compliance and security requirements that will be impacted by cloud computing.

Chapter 8: Understanding SLAs for Cloud Services by G.R. Gangadharan. Explore real-world instances of cloud service-level agreements, what clauses you should look for, and how to avoid agreements that give your provider most of the rights and hardly any liability.

Chapter 9: Cloud Computing -- A New Paradigm in IT by San Murugesan. Gain an overview of cloud computing and its potential and limitations.

Chapter 10: Cloud Computing and Software as a Service -- The Hyper, the Hype, and the Facts with Gabriele Piccoli, Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Luca Mari, and Aurelio Ravarini. Discover the enablers and drivers behind the software-as-a-service and cloud computing trends, as well as the process by which customer acceptance evolves over time.

Chapter 11: Here Comes Cloud Computing with Rob Austin, Christine Davis, Tom DeMarco, Lynne Ellyn, Tim Lister, Andy Maher, Lou Mazzucchelli, Ken Orr, and Mark Seiden. Review the operational economics of cloud computing, its benefits and drawbacks, and receive food for thought as you consider utilizing cloud applications at your organization.

Chapter 12: A Cloud in the Data Center and Services from the Cloud by Brian J. Dooley. Discover the implication that cloud architectures have for the enterprise, and review some of the cloud services vendor offerings, including offerings from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com, AT&T, HP, Sun, and Yahoo!.

Chapter 13: Analytics in the Cloud -- Products, Issues, and Considerations by Curt Hall. Explore some of the issues concerning the use of cloud-based/on-demand data warehousing and analytic applications.

Chapter 14: Up, Up, and Away -- Technology Life in the Clouds by Steve Andriole. Learn to think strategically, not tactically, about how you want to leverage technology.

Authors: Steve Andriole, Rob Austin, Charlie Bess, Beth Cohen, Christine Davis, Tom DeMarco, Brian J. Dooley, Lynne Ellyn, Dr. G.R.Gangadharan, Curt Hall, Jeffrey J. Hardy, Jim Hietala, Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Khaled M. Khan, Tim Lister, Jason Liu, Andy Maher, Luca Mari, Lou Mazzucchelli, San Murugesan, Ken Orr, Gabriele Piccoli, Aurelio Ravarini, Ed Reynolds, Mark Seiden, and Mark Willoughby

Published:

July 2009, 258 pages, PDF