Download Best Practices for Cloud Computing Adoption

Cloud computing models offer a new approach for IT organizations to deliver business services to end users. It is a technology model that provides both flexible IT deployments and dynamic business agility. The model offers capacity on a pay-as-you-go basis. That is, it provides a method of freeing and uniting computing capacity that had been isolated within business units. It makes system resources accessible to applications that span the entire organization. At its full potential, cloud computing can accelerate business innovation and transformation.

The adoption of cloud computing is best characterized as a journey that occurs over time and in stages. IDC research proposes five stages of cloud maturity: Ad Hoc, Opportunistic, Repeatable, Managed, and Optimized. Each stage requires greater investment — not just from IT but from line-of-business (LOB) budgets throughout the organization — and offers, in turn, increasing value. Based on the intensity of business drivers for cloud, organizations can advance to successive levels of cloud maturity at their own pace.