Cloud Computing is a recently emerged and rapidly changing and growing field in which computing resources and applications are offered as services as opposed to products. LinkedIn identified Cloud Computing as one of the most in-demand skills in 2020. This book was written with 4th-year Software Engineering students in mind as the target audience; however, it would be equally beneficial for anyone with a software engineering background and would like to learn about cloud computing.
The rapid changes in the industry make it difficult to find reliable resources, as, by the time a textbook is published, it would either be outdated or missing important aspects in the industry that emerged while the book was prepared to be published.
This book is offered as an open-source content by hosting it on a Github repository to make it easier to update and cultivate flexibility and collaboration through cloning and pull requests. So, instructors can clone the repo of the book if they’d like to customize it to their teaching plans, and everybody can suggest modifications or corrections by creating a pull request.
With the vastness and continuous expansion of the topics in the field, it’s not beneficial nor feasible to provide instructions on every single aspect. Alternatively, I aimed at covering the threshold concepts while encouraging the students to expand their knowledge by looking up additional information that was not directly mentioned.
The chapters in the book start with the most basic concepts and gradually build up toward more sophisticated ones, so skipping chapters is not recommended.
Every chapter has a set of hands-on exercises using Google Cloud Platform as examples of the concepts discussed in the chapter. The instructors can review and update the exercises to make sure they work before handing the chapters to the students.
Shaimaa’s career started in 2002 when she graduated with a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science & Statistics—ever since and throughout her M.Sc. and Ph.D. studies, she has been involved in both academia and the industry, building up and integrating experiences in teaching and working in software engineering.
Throughout the years, she developed a deep passion and determination to incorporate real-life experiences into her classes to equip the students with what they need to succeed in the industry.