Feeling overwhelmed by the buzz about SOA—service oriented architecture? Take heart! Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies, 2nd Edition makes it easy to understand, plan, and implement the latest SOA solutions for your business.Whether you’re the IT person responsible for developing SOA or the executive who’s trying to get a handle on the concept, Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies, 2nd Edition will help you understand what SOA is, why it’s important, a...

A solid introduction to the practices, plans, and skills required for developing a smart system architectureInformation architecture combines IT skills with business skills in order to align the IT structure of an organization with the mission, goals, and objectives of its business. This friendly introduction to IT architecture walks you through the myriad issues and complex decisions that many organizations face when setting up IT systems to work in sync with busi...

A handsome, commemorative edition of Peter F. Drucker’s timeless classic work on leadership and management, with a foreword by Jim Collins.What makes an effective executive?For decades, Peter F. Drucker was widely regarded as "the dean of this country’s business and management philosophers" (Wall Street Journal). In this concise and brilliant guide to managing oneself, he looks to the most influential position in management—the executive.Th...

Walter Isaacson’s “enthralling” (The New Yorker) worldwide bestselling biography of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs.Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and...

Updated new edition of Ralph Kimball's groundbreaking book on dimensional modeling for data warehousing and business intelligence!The first edition of Ralph Kimball's The Data Warehouse Toolkit introduced the industry to dimensional modeling, and now his books are considered the most authoritative guides in this space. This new third edition is a complete library of updated dimensional modeling techniques, the most comprehensive collection ever. It covers ...

Clouds are distributed technology platforms that leverage sophisticated technology innovations to provide highly scalable and resilient environments that can be remotely utilized by organizations in a multitude of powerful ways. To successfully build upon, integrate with, or even create a cloud environment requires an understanding of its common inner mechanics, architectural layers, and models, as well as an understanding of the business and economic factors that result from the adoption ...

Cloud isn’t simply a marketing term.  It’s not technology or hype either.  Cloud is a new way to look at how organizations operate.  From finance to marketing, from operations to IT, using cloud methodology can help make your organization more nimble, streamlined, innovative and more profitable while better enabling your employees to work more effectively and less restrained by your current IT systems.Unfortunately such a great leap in innovation comes w...

An expert guide to selecting the right cloud service model for your businessCloud computing is all the rage, allowing for the delivery of computing and storage capacity to a diverse community of end-recipients. However, before you can decide on a cloud model, you need to determine what the ideal cloud service model is for your business. Helping you cut through all the haze, Architecting the Cloud is vendor neutral and guides you in making one of the most c...

Up until now, no one has attempted to lay out the entire blueprint for architecting a complete IT service management supporting infrastructureuntil this book. What are the supporting toolsets and technologies that need to support an IT service management infrastructure? What databases need to be put into place? What are all the IT service management roles and responsibilities to effectively operate this infrastructure? What kinds of IT support services does almost any IT organization deliv...

The Concise Introduction to Modern SOA: High-Value Approaches, Innovative Technologies, Proven Use CasesAfter a decade of innovation in technology and practice, SOA is now a mainstream computing discipline, capable of transforming IT enterprises and optimizing business automation. In Next Generation SOA, top-selling SOA author Thomas Erl and a team of experts present a plain-English tour of SOA, service-orientation, and the key service technologies being u...

Practical, Real-World ITIL Configuration Management—From Start to FinishThe IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL) places the “best practices” in IT operations at your command. ITIL helps you make better technology choices, manages IT more effectively, and drives greater business value from all your IT investments. The core of ITIL is configuration management: the discipline of identifying, tracking, and controlling your IT environment’s diverse components to gain accurate and timely in...

You may regard cloud computing as an ideal way for your company to control IT costs, but do you know how private and secure this service really is? Not many people do. With Cloud Security and Privacy, you'll learn what's at stake when you trust your data to the cloud, and what you can do to keep your virtual infrastructure and web applications secure.Ideal for IT staffers, information security and privacy practitioners, business managers, service providers, and investors a...