Cloud Application Architecture Patterns

Foreword

Make it work. Make it right. Make it fast.

Kent Beck

Cloud computing isn’t a new thing. Long gone are the days of hype, and what we are left with is reality. Many organizations have already taken the leap, and with the emergence of cloud infrastructure in the mid to late 2000s more and more of the software we write runs on the cloud. Against this backdrop, it might seem odd therefore for me to talk about a book on cloud application architecture being important, but it is.

Fundamentally, the easy stuff has already gone to the cloud. Those applications that haven’t made the move haven’t done so because it is hard for them to make that jump. The low hanging fruit has been picked—we’re now reaching into the high branches, and we need help and support to get there. And this is where this book comes in.

Given how long we’ve had access to cloud infrastructure, it’s important to understand why many applications still haven’t made the switch. Legal and regulatory restrictions have long since ceased to be a roadblock in most situations. But fundamentally, a lot of applications are not built with the cloud in mind, so a planned transition is difficult.

Even for the applications that have made the move over, there is work to be done. As Kyle, Bobby, and Joe put it, “There are more applications running in the cloud than there are ones that run well in the cloud”. I don’t have a problem with a lift-and-shift approach to get applications into the cloud—what I have always objected ...