Cloud Computing Basic Learning Path - Fly me to the Cloud…

“There is no cloud. It is just someone else’s computer” This may sound like a joke, but it is just how things are technically happening. Cloud is no magic place where data and tasks are run. It is a concrete technical infrastructure, made available through the network, namely Internet, and usually via a browser, that can offer a wide range of services to a potentially very large audience.  

The Cloud phenomena can be seen as the result of decades of technical evolution… It was made possible through the development of communication and virtualization technologies, the rise and expansion of Application Service Provider delivery model, the incremental automatization of management process allowing self-service procedures… This evolution gave birth to models like IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service) and even XaaS (anything as a Service).  

The Cloud requires specific types of technologies, architectures and processes; it surely brings benefits, but also implies some drawbacks or risks that it is very important to cope with, not the least of which being the security of data and systems.  

In this learning path, we will go through the description of cloud environments, their types and models, their pros and cons; we will also provide a list of criteria to keep in mind when thinking of moving to a cloud platform.