Textbook in PDF format The National Institute of Standards of Technology (NIST) of the U.S. Department of Commerce defines cloud computing as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”1 This rather dense definition contains a number of important characteristics of cloud computing. Ubiquitous network access: Cloud computing is accessed over the Internet. This makes it accessible wherever Internet connectivity is available. On demand: Cloud computing is inherently on demand—i.e., you are not required to plan ahead how much of a resource you will need at a specific time in the future. Instead, you can use as much of each resource as you spontaneously need (as long as you can pay for it), and you are only billed for how much you actually use. Shared pool of configurable computing resources: In order to allow the previous point, cloud service providers have a large pool of computing resources (such as servers, storage, network capacity etc.) that is dynamically allocated to their customers on demand. Preface Fundamentals Technical Foundations Cloud Computing Platforms Types of Cloud Services Cloud Cloud Security Multi-Cloud Systems Cloud Operations Edge Computing, Internet of Things and Cloud-to-Edge Continuum 315 Summary