Stephen Bennett – författare

The Executive’s Strategic Guide to Driving Maximum Business Value from Cloud Services

 

Cloud services represent a fundamental shift in how individuals, enterprises, and governments conduct business, interact, and use technology. If used effectively, they can increase business agility and focus, simplify capacity planning, and strengthen cost control. Unsurprisingly, however, the cloud also presents risks. In this concise, executive level book, leading experts Archie Reed and Stephen G. Bennett share the insights and guidance decision-makers need to drive maximum value from cloud services--and avoid the pitfalls.

 

The authors explain what cloud computing is, how it works, who provides cloud services, and how companies are using them. Next, they walk through the entire cloud lifecycle, offering expert guidance on planning, governance, compliance, security, operations, administration, management, and more. You’ll learn how to:

 

·   Assess the opportunities, benefits, and risks of cloud services in your environment

·   Use the cloud to improve processes, accelerate system/product delivery, or create entirely new products and businesses

·   Approach the cloud strategically (and learn why you should)

·   Understand cloud infrastructure, operations, and standards from the decision-maker’s point of view

·   Build on existing solution architecture, design practices, and SOA investments

·   Ensure appropriate control, monitoring, compliance, and security

·   Use IT process standardization to simplify cloud services management

·   Define a flexible roadmap that enables multiple projects to move forward in parallel, and can change as the marketplace evolves

 

Cover illustration by RapidEye /iStockphoto.com

The Definitive Guide to Governing Shared Services and SOA Projects

 

SOA Governance: Governing Shared Services On-Premise and in the Cloud is the result of a multi-year project to collect proven industry practices for establishing IT governance controls specific to the adoption of SOA and service-orientation. Authored by world-renowned experts in the fields of SOA, IT governance, and cloud computing, this comprehensive book provides clear direction as to what does and does not constitute SOA governance and then steps the reader through the most important industry governance practices, as they pertain to individual SOA project lifecycle stages.

 

With a consistent, vendor-neutral focus, and with the help of case study examples, the authors demonstrate how to define and position precepts, organizational roles, processes, standards, and metrics. Readers benefit from thorough and visually depicted cross-references and mapping between roles, processes, precepts, and project stages, enabling them to fully explore dynamics and dependencies and thereby learn how to use these governance controls to create their own custom SOA governance systems.

 

This important title will be valuable to every practitioner concerned with making SOA work, including senior IT managers, project managers, architects, analysts, developers, administrators, QA professionals, security specialists, and cloud computing professionals.

 

Topic Areas

Defining SOA governance Establishing an SOA governance office and program Working with proven SOA governance precepts and processes Identifying organizational roles and relating them to SOA governance Associating design-time and runtime SOA project stages with SOA governance controls Governance considerations specific to shared services Roles, precepts, and factors specific to cloud-based services Understanding and categorizing SOA governance products and technologies Applying governance controls as early as the planning stages and measuring their success in subsequent stages Using vitality triggers to govern shared services on an on-going basis SOA governance controls that pertain to business information documents and policies

This collaborative collection provides fresh perspectives on Christianity and the conduct of war in medieval East Central Europe and Scandinavia, investigating the intersection between religion, culture, and warfare in territories that were only integrated into Christendom in the Central Middle Ages. The contributors analyze cultures that lay outside Charlemagne's limes and the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire, to consider a region stretching from the Balkans to the Baltic and Scandinavia.The volume considers clerics as military leaders and propagandists, the role of Christian ritual and doctrine in warfare, and the adaptation and transformation of indigenous military cultures. It uncovers new information on perceptions of war and analyzes how local practices were incorporated into clerical narratives, enabling the reader to achieve a complete understanding of the period.

The motivations behind those who went on the Third Crusade examined through close investigation of their social networks.The Third Crusade (1189-1192) was an attempt by Latin Christendom to reconquer the Holy Land, following the capture of Jerusalem by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1187. Tens of thousands responded to a call for a crusade by Pope Gregory VIII and the efforts of his preachers at mass cross-taking ceremonies, rallying to the expedition's leaders - Frederick Barbarossa, Philip Augustus, and Richard the Lionheart.This book analyses the communal and cultural factors that influenced nobles from north-western Europe who embarked on the Third Crusade, bringing out the motives, dynamics, and extent of their participation, and placing that participation in the broader social and geographical context of crusading and medieval life. It shows that significant numbers of them were themselves descended from crusaders, and that the majority of them travelled to the Levant in the company of friends, family, and neighbours, as well as through membership of a military household. It also highlights the role of key individuals - both male and female - who influenced the decision to undertake the crusade, and identifies the significant role played by particular religious institutions in the diffusion of crusading ideology.

When Stephen’s mother-in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer, his family life was turned upside down. But when his six-year-old daughter is also diagnosed soon after, life quickly becomes unrecognisable, and the whole family is plunged into a challenging and uncertain world.Fuelled by a mixture of hope, fear and love, this is the story of one family’s tragic yet heart-warming journey through cancer diagnoses and treatments. Told through the eyes of a father trying to guide his young daughter through treatment and support his whole family while struggling to cope with the extreme challenges himself, Stephen diaries the journey as he desperately clings to the fading hope of a miracle that might just see his daughter overcome the seemingly impossible.

The motivations behind those who went on the Third Crusade examined through close investigation of their social networks.The Third Crusade (1189-1192) was an attempt by Latin Christendom to reconquer the Holy Land, following the capture of Jerusalem by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1187. Tens of thousands responded to a call for a crusade by Pope Gregory VIII and the efforts of his preachers at mass cross-taking ceremonies, rallying to the expedition's leaders - Frederick Barbarossa, Philip Augustus, and Richard the Lionheart.This book analyses the communal and cultural factors that influenced nobles from north-western Europe who embarked on the Third Crusade, bringing out the motives, dynamics, and extent of their participation, and placing that participation in the broader social and geographical context of crusading and medieval life. It shows that significant numbers of them were themselves descended from crusaders, and that the majority of them travelled to the Levant in the company of friends, family, and neighbours, as well as through membership of a military household. It also highlights the role of key individuals - both male and female - who influenced the decision to undertake the crusade, and identifies the significant role played by particular religious institutions in the diffusion of crusading ideology.

Fresh perspectives on one of the largest and most complex crusades ever launched, covering all aspects of the expeditions - from preparation and commencement to results and consequences. Saladin's victory at the Battle of Hattin in 1187 produced three profound results: a shattered Jerusalem army, a pope falling dead from the news, and the launching of the Third Crusade in response. Under the banners of renowned rulers like Richard the Lionheart, Philip Augustus, and Frederick Barbarossa, men and women from across Latin Christendom took the Cross and joined in the largest western military expedition since Urban II's call to arms in 1095 for the First Crusade. Long dormant in the renewal of crusade studies in the twenty-first century, the Third Crusade has in recent years begun to attract increased scholarly attention. Adopting a cross-cultural focus that examines both western and eastern societies, this book offers a substantial and timely reappraisal. Chapters shed light on the crusade's causes, context, organization, participants, preparations, commencement, military progress, and short and long-term consequences, and scrutinise well-known sources through new lenses. They also engage with communication theory, the history of emotions, textual criticism and textuality, historiography, archaeology, and topography. Together, they provide both a fresh view of this complex and multifaceted war and a useful survey of its major contours.