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

• Analysing 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

Benefiting from SaaS

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

Live, in-class demonstrations

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

Improving Application Delivery with Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Employing PaaS

• Leveraging off-premises 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 Organisational Agility with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Implementing IaaS

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

Minimising risk to your organisation

• Immediate response to market demands
• Elastically scaling infrastructure capacity to meet organisational 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

• Analysing 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 customised solution

Moving Forward to Cloud Adoption

Taking the next steps to implement cloud computing in your organisation

• Building a business case
• Selecting a pilot project

Forecasting the cloud

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