My first experience with an “inverted yield curve” was in 2001 just prior to the tech bubble bursting. I was working on a financial portal for an investment bank and one of the charts was a yield curve. It looked odd all of a sudden, so I looked it up in a book of financial terms. An inverted yield is indicated when interest rates for short-term capital are higher than interest rates for long-term capital. In other words, people are willing to pay a significant price to alleviate short-term concerns because they’re focused on the now and not so concerned about one year, three years, five years, or thirty years from now. Inverted yield curves some believe signal disruption in financial markets. On the surface, Cloud First seems to signal the disruption that is cloud computing. To take this metaphor a little further, this inversion of Cloud First from “Cloud Never” suggests to me an inverted set of concerns. Does Cloud First prioritize an immediate need to say “something” about the cloud and cloud strategy? Does Cloud First prioritize the now while discounting near, mid, and long-term opportunities that far exceed the “costs less, more agile, faster time-to-market” recording I hear played daily throughout the blogosphere? Beyond staying Cloud First what else can enterprise technology teams prioritize that may amplify their ability to execute in the cloud?