The Business Aspects of Cloud: Let’s Get Started

The cloud discussions have been changing rapidly over the last months, focusing away from infrastructure to applications, services and industry requirements.
I’ve spent the last several weeks addressing some of the business aspects of cloud and why/how companies move to the cloud. It’s time now to wrap this series up. The cloud discussions have been changing rapidly over the last months, focusing away from infrastructure to applications, services and industry requirements.

Implementations in larger companies typically started with development & test activities within the IT department, while business teams used “shadow-IT” approaches to source services from external parties, potentially putting the enterprise at risk. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

The main reason is the perceived lack of responsiveness and agility of IT. As I pointed out, it is increasingly becoming clear that one size does not fit all, in cloud computing and that the CIO should become a “strategic service broker”, sourcing services from a series of cloud environments going from private to public clouds and from IaaS to SaaS services.
To achieve a successful transition to cloud computing, the CIO needs to address three areas

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