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Cloud computing : a hands-on approach
Bahga A., Madisetti V., Arshdeep Bahga & Vijay Madisetti, Atlanta, GA, 2014. 456 pp. Type: Book (978-0-996025-50-8)
Date Reviewed: Aug 21 2015

This book surprised me in many ways. Let’s start with the negative surprise: it is not as carefully written as I would have liked it to be. Typographical errors, grammatically incorrect sentences, and redundancies and inconsistencies in coverage and depth annoy the reader from time to time.

However, the book offers many positive surprises as well, and luckily they clearly outweigh the above weaknesses. The greatest strength of the book is its wide coverage of not only cloud computing, but also many related technologies, including Hadoop and MapReduce, big data analytics, and programming in Python for the cloud. The latter is an especially strong feature: as a bonus, the book teaches Python starting from the basics, and then building on these fundamentals showcases many advanced cloud computing topics, like implementing cloud security mechanisms and recommendation systems in Python. As a result, the book is far more than just a user’s guide to cloud computing: readers get a solid overview of the whole cloud ecosystem and underlying technologies, and learn how to create useful cloud applications on their own.

The subtitle is indeed what characterizes the book. The authors successfully avoid the trap of immersing in the hype that has surrounded cloud computing for the last couple of years. They describe facts, deep technical content, but in a simple and easily understood style. Tons of diagrams and screen shots, as well as practical examples using popular cloud services from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, make the material even more specific and practical.

The book is organized into three parts (13 chapters). Part 1 introduces the fundamental concepts and underlying technologies ranging from virtualization to Hadoop. Part 2 is about software development for the cloud, giving an introduction to Python in general and then to Python programming for the cloud. By the end of Part 2 readers can create useful cloud applications in Python, for instance, a social media analytics app, and deploy and run them in the cloud. Finally, Part 3 covers various advanced topics, from cloud security to cloud application benchmarking and tuning. Each chapter starts with a brief introduction and an enumeration of the topics of the chapter, and ends with a summary and a list of questions for self-assessment; some chapters also contain lab exercises.

The book’s companion website (http://www.cloudcomputingbook.info/) deserves a mention. It contains additional useful information, like details on the recommended cloud services to be used with the book (including a preconfigured Ubuntu image to download) and links to further material on some topics. The website could be even more useful if it provided, for example, the source code of the examples described in the book (the book’s preface actually mentions that the source code is available on the website, but I could not find it). But even in its current limited form the website is a useful addition to the book.

According to the authors, the book is primarily intended as a textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses. It certainly is suitable for that purpose. However, in my opinion, it can serve a much wider audience than just students. It can be recommended to anybody--even seasoned professionals--who wants a comprehensive overview of today’s prevalent technologies in a clear and straightforward way.

More reviews about this item: Amazon

Reviewer:  Zoltan Mann Review #: CR143712 (1511-0921)
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