Getting Started with Big Data and Cloud Computing

The landscape of technology in general and data processing have transformed significantly in the past decade. In the past decade alone, the evolution of cloud computing revolutionized the concept of building data pipelines in the cloud. This chapter will serve as an introduction or preamble to engineering data pipelines using major cloud technologies. We will focus on the early adopters of cloud computing, namely, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and their cloud computing stack. In this chapter, we will discuss how cloud computing is packaged and delivered, along with some technologies and their underlying principles. Although many of these are now automated at present, it is essential to have an understanding of these concepts.