Free excerpt from Cloud Adoption Framework for Small Business ebook

CareerEvolve.com is in the final editing of their new ebook titled "Cloud Adoption Framework for Small Business-48 hrs To Better Manage Cloud For Your Business " and we wanted to share with you an excerpt from the ebook.  

Email us at support@careerevolve.com and let us know if you are interested in receiving a discounted advance copy of the ebook for $4.99 before it is sold on Amazon.

We hope that you enjoy this free excerpt from "CLOUD ADOPTION FRAMEWORK for Small Business".

Foreward

Are you a small business owner trying to understand cloud but uncertain about the technical language, marketing hype or just simply where to start?

Can you easily answer what goals you have for your business?

Are you missing business opportunities due to unsupportive technology investments, poor productivity of IT and misuse of resources?

How will cloud computing help your Business meet its goals?

Cloud Computing requires a new approach to how IT services are designed, delivered and maintained. Most importantly is the fact that cloud dictates substantial change for your Business.

Not having a strategy for cloud will lead to false starts and mistakes that slow your cloud transformation, introducing competitive risks and diminished credibility for your business. Cloud computing is another transformation agent that small business leaders must understand in order to effectively control its influence of change toward their business.

The Cloud Adoption Framework for Small Business offers structure to help business leaders correctly plan their cloud adoption journey. Small business leaders can leverage either the complete framework or elements of the framework as a reference guide. Its main purpose is to make the transition toward cloud services easier to understand and more manageable.

48 hrs To Better Manage Cloud For Your Business will provide you with a practical and easy to follow approach for managing cloud that can be learned in a weekend.

The Cloud Adoption Framework for Small Business accelerates your cloud journey with an actionable path to success.

Preface

Businesses are looking for cloud solutions to solve some their biggest business and technology challenges. Yet businesses face several challenges while embracing new technologies and nowhere is this more prevalent than in the the adoption of cloud services.Your business requires the ability to determine if it should move to the cloud and what is actually being moved. To enable the best cloud model for your business you need to understand where to start and identify areas of your business that will be impacted. With the right model your cloud adoption can be simpler, smoother and secure.

"Companies that adopted cloud computing haphazardly increased IT costs by 2-3%" - Aberdeen Group


The growth of cloud computing is continually expanding. Businesses embrace cloud to reduce information technology costs, improve service quality and support innovation by speeding up new product and service delivery. Cloud represents a new model for delivering business and technology services that has an impact which is more economical and organizational than technical. This new model requires business leaders to have a solid foundation in cloud concepts and ensuring that traditional planning activities for strategy, financial and people are not forgotten.

48 hrs To Better Manage Cloud For Your Business is built upon the Cloud Adoption Framework for Small Business which places priority on the people, process and tools that are required for any business to succeed. It will help your business understand your state of readiness to move to a cloud model, the challenges, implications, and benefits.

What Is Included in This Book

This book will provide small business owners, and all business leaders, with a guide toward maximizing the benefits of cloud computing for their organization. It provides the reader with a roadmap of key discussion and decision points that are recommended to occur in order to strategically think about cloud computing. Whether you are looking to learn more about the basic concepts of cloud computing, identified a need for cloud computing or already have cloud computing within your business then this book is for you. The book is largely from the perspective of a business owner that needs to make strategic decisions and associate cloud technologies within their business operations. The book is divided across six dimensions which should already exist within your business today.

Here is a general introduction to each of the dimensions:

The Cloud Adoption Framework for Small Business provides a structured approach for business owners to properly plan and manage the impact and benefits of cloud computing for their business. It decomposes your cloud journey into key domains - Strategy, Action, Decisions, People, Financial and Results.

The Cloud Adoption Framework for Small Business can be followed in a linear order starting from Strategy in the centre of the model and moving clockwise from Action and ending at Results, or your business can select the domain elements that are relevant to its environment. Decision points that your business will need to make will encompass elements from multiple domains.

Section 1: Strategy
This domain involves setting the direction and scope of your business over the long-term. It achieves advantage for the business through its configuration of resources to meet the needs of the business related to customers, partners, staff and to fulfill your business stakeholder expectations.

Section 2: Action
This domain involves defining a course of action or planning to deliver upon the vision identified for your business. It links the Strategy of your business to the required work items to move your business toward its journey.

Section 3: Decisions
This domain provides your business with several of the key decision points that will define the decisions for selecting cloud services. The level of risk that is acceptable to your business, the costs and lifecycle of a business will be core elements of this domain.

Section 4: People
Cloud more than just a technology change and it impacts the ways in which the workforce of your business operates. This domain will look at the new and changing roles that can transform your workforce, and how Business and IT are managed.

Section 5: Financial
This domain will focus upon how cloud impacts your business model creates new financial considerations for the operating model of your business.

Section 6: Results
This domain reinforces the need to identify what represents success for your business and approaches to monitor and report upon progress of your Strategy and Actions.

How to Read This Book?

Each section provides its own analysis and recommendations for business leaders to follow. It is recommended to start with Section 1: Strategy and progress through each section in order, however you can select any section and follow it depending your previous knowledge and experience with the identified concepts. The contents of the book are structured in such a way that you can incrementally grow your knowledge and finish with a solid foundation toward defining your own plan for the adoption of cloud services.

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is designed for small business leaders that typically have several areas of responsibility and must build up their understanding of strategy, cloud technology and how it transforms the business activities of any organization. Emphasis is placed on providing an easy to follow cloud adoption framework that can be readily applied to any business structure and can be followed by business and technical professionals.

What Will I Learn?

The book will provide an opportunity for learning how cloud is truly a business transformation and that there are several aspects to consider besides technology when thinking about cloud computing for your business.

•Readers will learn about a 6 step approach to manage the impact of cloud computing on their business.
•Readers will be able to understand the key terms and concepts associated to cloud computing and enterprise architecture.
•Readers will be able to learn about the benefits of cloud, the risks of cloud, the types of cloud service models, and the types of cloud deployment models.
•Readers will also learn about the changes that cloud can create toward the people, processes and tools of your Business.
•Readers will learn about the skills of a Cloud Architect.
•Readers will be able to identify architecture principles, importance of a taxonomy, insight into how to assess an architecture, role of reference models and reference architectures, develop architecture descriptions for their organization, and understand the value of enterprise architecture frameworks.
•Readers will be able to discuss and plan for an enterprise architecture repository and cloud services catalogue in order to support knowledge management within their organization.
•Readers will learn about Shadow IT.
•Readers will be able to prepare for employment opportunities as Cloud Architects as they review typical interview questions for enterprise architects.
•Readers will be able to build their own inventory of reusable artifacts to support their enterprise architecture work efforts.
•Readers will learn about common project pitfalls to avoid for cloud projects.