Architecting the Cloud: Design Decisions for Cloud Computing Service Models (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to thank my wife, Eleni, and my kids, Yanni and Athena. They have supported me throughout my career and have made way too many sacrifices over the last decade as my journey took me from four years of graduate studies at night, to five years of being a road warrior, and to the six months when I was holed up in my office writing this book.

I could not have written this book without the guidance, constructive criticism, and encouragement of my friend, mentor, and fellow RESTafarian, Jason Bloomberg, president of ZapThink. Thanks for reviewing my chapters and helping me out at times when I was stuck.

A special thanks goes out to two warriors whom I have taken to battle with me for well over 10 years and who were a major reason we won the AWS Start-Up Challenge in 2010, Greg Rapp and Jack Hickman. Without talented, dedicated, and loyal technicians like these two guys, I would never have gained the experience required to write about the cloud. Nobody was crazy enough to take point-of-sale (POS) transactions out of grocery stores and into the public cloud back in 2008. We were met with resistance from retailers, POS vendors, investors, peers, and just about everyone. Greg and Jack never questioned the strategy and accepted the challenge. Together we changed the retail industry forever, and now cloud-based POS transactions are the future. Thanks, Greg and Jack!

And finally, thanks to my parents for raising me to be driven to be the best ...