The particular cloud computing technologies you choose (if any) depend on your working practices, your business size, your current IT systems and the skills of your internal staff. All these points will be covered in later chapters, but
here are some quick technology tips to bear in mind as you proceed through the book:
- If you want off-the-shelf software that you can access from anywhere then choose Software as a Service; but look for solutions with comprehensive web services interfaces to facilitate integration with other systems.
- If you want to customize your software choose Platform as a Service over SaaS; but choose the solution that best matches your in-house skills, beware vendor lock-in, and consider choosing a platform that has a wide range of ready-made applications that you can plug in to yours.
- If you want complete control over your application servers use Infrastructure as a Service; but consider the portability of your virtual machines as you may wish to move them between clouds at some point.
- If you do not want your data to be hosted in a public cloud then use private cloud technologies; but choose an internal cloud management system that supports a hybrid cloud configuration in case you ever need to manually or dynamically increase your available computing capacity.