For senior business and IT management in small, medium, and large enterprises or government agencies who have or are contemplating using the Cloud's services to deliver application, platform, and infrastructure solutions. "Shapes In The Cloud" is a straightforward business-driven perspective on Cloud Computing challenges and opportunities for the curious and innovative among us. When you have completed reading "Shapes In The Cloud," you should be conversant with business and IT audiences on Cloud Computing service requirements, evaluations, selection, development, implementation, and ongoing support. What is Cloud Computing? What business drivers have led us to this new paradigm? There has to be reason in there somewhere. What are the benefits from Cloud Computing? What are the limiting or inhibiting factors? What are its moving parts? How do they fit together? What is all of this granularity-in-metrics and subscription pricing about? What descriptive methods or prescriptive solutions are key components to moving toward a broad basis of Cloud Computing adoption? What are the use cases and patterns for providers and consumers to evaluate on the type of Cloud service, or the Cloud deployment model? What if you are moving from an on-premise owned-everything situation to an on-demand pay-as-you-use-it situation? How should one evaluate all of this? "Shapes In The Cloud" covers Cloud service providers and consumers, and several aspects of Cloud-related topics: virtualization, multi-tenancy, infrastructure, IaaS, platforms, PaaS, applications, SaaS, Cloud security, Cloud management, ITIL, ITSM, BSM, integrated Cloud lifecycle management, use of metrics, item granularity, Cloud pricing, usage patterns, use case scenarios for service consumer and provider, and the comparison of Waterfall development and agile Scrum development models.

"Life at the End of a Dirt Road" is a sometimes funny, sometimes poignant but always interesting view of life on a working cattle ranch. With wry humor and insight, the author recounts a vanishing way of life played out on a 1,700-acre ranch in Northern California during the mid 20th century. Mostly written from the author's perspective as an impressionable ranch kid, the book vividly describes how he learned to gig frogs, craft slingshots, milk cows and execute chickens. The reader will peer over his shoulder as he faces hair-raising perils, both real and imaginary, whether it's fetching a jar of jam from the creepy, spider-filled cellar; fending off werewolves with a shovel while irrigating after dark; or negotiating the bewildering customs of a box social at school. The reader also will meet unforgettable characters, both critters and humans, from Shep, the mighty ranch dog and his obsessive, doomed pursuit of porcupines, to Mrs. Salvadori, the wife of the previous owner, who reportedly motivated her husband to build her a new house by burning down the old one. The result is a humorous, illuminating and richly illustrated account of life at the end of a dirt road.

"Life at the End of a Dirt Road" is a sometimes funny, sometimes poignant but always interesting view of life on a working cattle ranch. With wry humor and insight, the author recounts a vanishing way of life played out on a 1,700-acre ranch in Northern California during the mid 20th century. Mostly written from the author's perspective as an impressionable ranch kid, the book vividly describes how he learned to gig frogs, craft slingshots, milk cows and execute chickens. The reader will peer over his shoulder as he faces hair-raising perils, both real and imaginary, whether it's fetching a jar of jam from the creepy, spider-filled cellar; fending off werewolves with a shovel while irrigating after dark; or negotiating the bewildering customs of a box social at school. The reader also will meet unforgettable characters, both critters and humans, from Shep, the mighty ranch dog and his obsessive, doomed pursuit of porcupines, to Mrs. Salvadori, the wife of the previous owner, who reportedly motivated her husband to build her a new house by burning down the old one. The result is a humorous, illuminating and richly illustrated account of life at the end of a dirt road.