Foreword

The information technology (IT) industry is again on the cusp of a major transformation. Business digitization is a trend that is impacting companies across industry verticals, from healthcare to manufacturing to retail and more. Digitization, defined as the leverage of IT to improve the experiences of a workforce and customer base while streamlining operational processes, is bringing the opportunity for organizations to fundamentally transform themselves and create new lines of business and revenue.

To realize the promise of this new era of IT in which we live, companies will need to embrace new ways of thinking about their networks and overall IT strategy: machine learning, harvesting the data that will come from the billions of new devices to be securely connected via the “Internet of Things,” and last, the megatrend that has arguably made the most significant impact on the IT industry since its inception: cloud.

Throughout my career, at both startups and Fortune 500 companies, I have experienced firsthand the positive business impact of moving to a cloud-first model. Cloud computing has forever changed how businesses think about building, consuming, and deploying their products. This book establishes a foundation for understanding the next transformation in cloud computing called Intercloud. Intercloud enables enterprises to interconnect and network between public clouds and private clouds to take the benefits of the cloud computing paradigm to a new level.

This book provides an in-depth description of the components of Intercloud for the business and IT professional and addresses the security concerns of businesses that leverage this new platform.

Zorawar Biri Singh
Cisco Systems
April 2016