Preface

Enterprises are increasingly adopting a multi-cloud strategy, using a mix of Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), hosted on platforms such as AWS, Azure, and other technology stacks. This leaves the architects and lead engineers with the challenge of how to integrate architectures and manage the enterprise cloud. Architects and engineers will learn how to design, implement, and integrate cloud solutions and set up controls for governance.

The first edition of this book was released in 2020, but developments in the cloud are rapidly evolving. This edition is extended with two cloud platforms that have grown significantly over the past years, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Alibaba Cloud. New methodologies have also been adopted by companies to improve cloud management. This includes the financial controls of FinOps and embedded security in DevSecOps.

After the introduction of the concept of multi-cloud, this book covers all of the topics that architects should consider when designing systems for multi-cloud platforms. That starts with designing connectivity to and between the various platforms and creating landing zones in Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and Alibaba Cloud. These clouds will be discussed in this book.

The book is divided into four main sections, covering the following:

1. Introduction to cloud and multi-cloud architecture and governance
2. Operations, including setting up and managing the landing zones that provide the infrastructure for cloud environments
3. Financial operations using the principles of FinOps
4. Continuous delivery and deployment using DevSecOps, covering identity and access management, securing data, security information, and new concepts such as AIOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

The book contains best practices for the major providers, discusses common pitfalls and how to avoid them, and gives recommendations for methodologies and tools. Of course, a book about multi-cloud could never be complete, but this book will provide you with good guidelines to get started with architecting for multi-cloud.