## About This Book 

This book gives you some insights into what it means to leverage both IaaS and PaaS in both public and private cloud environments and how these environments work with data center services. Companies leveraging these foundational cloud services need to keep all the models in context with business requirements for performance, security, and portability. 

This book helps put the foundational cloud services — IaaS and PaaS into context. In addition, the topics covered in this book are critical to the success of hybrid environments. 

## Foolish Assumptions 

This book is useful to many people, but we have to admit that we did pick a segment of the world to focus on. Here’s who we think you are: 

✓ You’re already using various forms of cloud computing and are planning a long-term strategy. Perhaps we’re preaching to the choir. You understand that the benefits of using all kinds of flexible cloud computing models represent sources of sustainable competitive advantage. 

✓ You’re a business leader who wants IT resources to be a utility that’s optimized to leverage what you’ve already paid for. You want IT to serve your business needs — you want to be able to execute your strategy on your timetable. You want IT to be your partner in innovating for the future. 

✓ You’re an IT leader who knows a lot about technology but aren’t sure precisely how cloud computing — public, private, or a combination of the two as a hybrid model — works. You need to understand how cloud computing changes IT and what you need to do to support the business with cloud computing as an important enabler. 

