Too often companies are faced with a choice: elasticity or security.

On the upside, the benefits of cloud computing are achieved through elasticity as much as anything else. As Craig Sheridan notes:

“More specifically then, elasticity in the cloud is the ability of an application to automatically adjust the infrastructure resources it uses to accommodate varied workloads and priorities, while maintaining availability and performance in a context-aware environment.”

Elasticity, then, enables businesses to tap into what can be understood as the cost saving mechanisms of cloud. The ability to scale up and down resources as you need them enables businesses to pay for what they actually use rather than provisioning a guestimate for what they will need and accepting the potential money lost.

However, for many enterprises, elasticity of cloud is at odds with their current abilities. These enterprise architectures are not designed to take advantage of elasticity benefits for …