This book reviews the challenging issues that present barriers to greater implementation of the cloud computing paradigm, together with the latest research into developing potential solutions. Topics and features: presents a focus on the most important issues and limitations of cloud computing, covering cloud security and architecture, QoS and SLAs; discusses a methodology for cloud security management, and proposes a framework for secure data storage and identity management in the cloud; introduces a simulation tool for energy-aware cloud environments, and an efficient congestion control system for data center networks; examines the issues of energy-aware VM consolidation in the IaaS provision, and software-defined networking for cloud related applications; reviews current trends and suggests future developments in virtualization, cloud security, QoS data warehouses, cloud federation approaches, and DBaaS provision; predicts how the next generation of utility computing infrastructures will be designed.

Prof. Zaigham Mahmood is an Associate Lecturer (Research) at the University of Derby, UK; Senior Technology Consultant at Debesis Education, UK; Professor Extraordinaire at North West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa; and Foreign Professor at NUST Islamabad, Pakistan. His other publications include the successful Springer booksContinued Rise of the Cloud: Advances and Trends in Cloud Computing,Cloud Computing: Methods and Practical Approaches,Cloud Computing for Enterprise Architectures, andSoftware Engineering Frameworks for the Cloud Computing Paradigm.

Part I: Limitations and Challenges of Cloud Environments.-Attacks in Public Clouds.- Distributed Database Management Systems.- Quality of Service and Service Level Agreements for Cloud Environments.-Part II: Current Developments and R&D Solutions.-A Methodology for Cloud Security Risk Management.- SecDSIM.- CloudReports.- Cloud Computing: Efficient Congestion Control in Data Center Networks.- Energy-Aware Virtual Machine Consolidation in IaaS Cloud Computing.- Software-Defined Networking (SDN) for Cloud Applications.-Part III: Advances in Cloud Technologies and Future Trends.-Virtualization and Cloud Security.- Quality-of-Service Data Warehouse for the Selection of Cloud Services.- Characterizing Cloud Federation Approaches.- Security Aspects of Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) in Cloud Computing.- Beyond the Clouds: How Should Next Generation Utility Computing Infrastructures Be Designed?