Ahead in the Cloud: Best Practices for Navigating the Future of Enterprise IT

The enterprise IT world has been screaming out for a book like this for a long time. Cloud practitioners will be familiar with the challenges of launching any size of cloud strategy in companies with on-premise IT, and the same difficulties and obstacles appear over and over. Cloud providers have offered whitepapers and generic presentations for years but mostly the information is fragmented and can be difficult to absorb in terms of converting to practical, actionable steps.Orban's book is the first time I've seen all the information you need in one place, and is broadly targeted to readers in an IT leadership role who will face the many questions around adoption and implementation. The book spends the first part dissecting the different adoption styles in a pragmatic way and then the remainder focuses on best practices and insights from companies that have completed the journey. The author made the wise decision to develop short chapters packed with information, so it's easy to absorb a few pages at a time.The writing style is clear and concise and he talks enthusiastically on a subject that can be difficult to convey. This is an extraordinarily broad and fluid area of IT and it's a truly admirable effort to corral all the important elements into one place. I've read many books on cloud and currently this is really "The Bible" when it comes to adoption and the real-life challenges of migration from on-premise solutions. This should be compulsory reading for anyone starting their corporate cloud journey - it will save a huge amount of time and frustration.

Great book (must read) for any leader who want their organization to move to cloud. It outlines framework that can be planned, road mapped and executed. It helps to understand different migration approaches, benefits of each and how to execute cloudification. It also helps on how to start building team, how to choose partners, and best practices on all around cloud programs. This is for organizations while are willing to go to cloud.In addition, it also has lot of insights from real customers who did this in last (5-7) years. That matters most - to learn new stuff from new experiences and newer approaches.Thank you Stephen Orban for writing real clouding business in this book.

This is a comprehensive collection of blogs with the wisdom to help you to build your own Cloud strategy. It’s not a technical book, but it is a inspiration source for everyone starting the Cloud journey.

Awesome read! This book shines a light on the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is a must-read for professionals across all verticals regardless if you are a Corporate Professional and/or an Entrepreneur. What really stood out is Stephen’s ability to weave together transformational Cloud Technology concepts and marry them to leadership principles of cultural adoption.P.S. The quote by Robert A. Heinlein is great, but we will not hold against him that he was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy -Go Army, Beat Navy!

Some good, high level content here about how to start and organize around a cloud journey - the stages of adoption, the cloud migration process, the 6 R's of migration strategy - all helpful. The reason I gave this 3 stars is that with the exception of the many customer stories at the end it is incredibly REPETITIVE. This book could easily be half as long - and more valuable as a result. Lots of re-posts of Stephen's past blogs (with an added intro), constants references to other sections where he talks about the same subject matter, make the organization of the content occasionally confusing. An editor would have helped. But again, you can tease out some good high-level paths to follow.

Stephen drives straight to the heart of Strategic Enterprise Cloud Adoption with a concise and pragmatic view of how to achieve success in a modern technology landscape. Covering aspects of executive sponsorship, staff training, experimentation and cultural change, he never loses sight of the magnitude of the activity, nor of the reasons for taking on this challenge. Providing great outcomes for customers requires a dynamic technology platform, and this is increasingly a core tenet in business success and survival.If you want to benefit from the experience of others and pursue an optimal path to future state Enterprise IT then this book is for you. Read it, practice it, share your experiences.

Whether you're thinking of migrating your applications to the cloud or in the midst of a cloud migration, this book contains insights every Executive and Technical professional should grasp to ensure a successful journey. Most Executives want to understand what other Executives are doing; this book has it. Most Technical professionals want to know what went right and wrong for others who have embarked on a similar path; this book has it. If you're a sales professional working with customers considering a move to the cloud, you should read this book so you can become a trusted advisor. This book is filled with customer use cases, lessons learned, best practices, thought-provoking questions, and much more that you can add to your toolset to differentiate yourself from other salespeople.As a non-technical person, I found that Stephen Orban did a great job of unpacking complex technical jargon into digestible and understandable concepts. There are links to resources in case you want to dive deeper into the topics discussed in the book. Hope you enjoy the book!