Grounding the Cloud: Basics and Brokerage

"Picture Ben Franklin attempting to harness energy from a lightning-filled sky. The key tied to his kite was the middleman between electricity and the ground. This book details how using the cloud can be your key to finding or enhancing success."

Understanding cloud computing is hard enough. Cloud service brokerage, however, is the way forward for just about any enterprise. This book is an easy to understand overview that will allow you to harness the power of the cloud to advance your business goals using clearly defined concepts of cloud computing, easy to understand definitions, comprehensive checklists, and real-world success stories.

Written by my friend Todd Lyle, it explores the three cloud models (public, private, and hybrid) by showing how organizations of all sizes, from small private accounting firms to massive governmental agencies, can utilize the current IT revolution to greatly increase productivity by embracing the cloudʼs ecosystem of shared services. Earlier this month Todd and I discussed this in-depth during our interview with Dana Gardner of Briefings Direct.

Cloud Services Brokerage: Adding Trust and Oversight to Complex Cloud Deals

According to the Gartner IT Glossary, "Cloud services brokerage (CSB) is an IT role and business model in which a company or other entity adds value to one or more (public or private) cloud services on behalf of one or more consumers of that service via three primary roles including aggregation, integration and customization brokerage". The value of these brokerage services are fueling a major debate in industry and this month in BriefingsDirect, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, is contributing to the discussion with a timely podcast in which he moderates a discussion between Todd D. Lyle, President of Duncan, LLC and myself on the value of CSBs with an emphasis on small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), regional businesses, and government.

No two businesses have identical needs, and so specialized requirements need to be factored into the use of often commodity-type cloud services. An intermediary brokerage can help companies and government agencies make the best use of commodity and targeted clouds and not fall prey to replacing an on-premises integration problem with a cloud complexity problem.To learn more about the role and value of the specialist cloud services brokerage, please listen to the podcast below.

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