Cloud computing has recently become a very important technology. Many businesses now depend on cloud computing to run their daily data processing and many other functions. It goes without saying that cloud computing is becoming one of the most important technologies for modern business operations.

However, as a new and emerging technology, the access control, securities, standards, management, governance, accessibility, and so on all need to be further studied. This book fills a small part of the gap between theories and applications.

It comprises five parts and 15 chapters. The first part is about access control mechanisms and cloud security, which are quite important topics. However, as an edited book, the editors had to accept and select from what the authors submitted. Cloud security could include many topics, but it is barely touched on in this part. Part 2, “Standards, Brokerage Services and Certification,” is too broad a topic to be covered in only three chapters, especially the standards part; it needs to be elaborated. Part 3 discusses frameworks, enterprise resource planning (ERP), big data, and interoperability. Actually, ERP and big data, though related to cloud computing, are important topics that deserve their own books. One chapter is devoted to each topic in this part. Part 4 is related to cloud management, governance, and capability assessment. Part 5 talks about applications in education and other scenarios.

The book tries to cover a broad range of cloud computing topics, but it fails to provide much depth. A last word for book editors: don’t be too ambitious or include topics that are too broad when requesting chapters.