How to Achieve the Strategic Value of Cloud While Delivering Real ROI

The path to cloud computing isn't particularly clear, and IT transformation can't happen overnight. This sort of change requires an incremental, stepwise progression that yields benefits along the way. This is the explicit goal of the Cloud Computing Adoption Model: a graduated approach for adoption of cloud technologies that allows benefits to be realized incrementally.

The reality is that change of this magnitude always creates new risk. The Cloud Computing Adoption Model helps to lay out a clear path to cloud without putting projects, budgets and even careers at risk. Central to this adoption model is the virtualized application, a self-contained application image that includes all of the operating components and systems software it requires to run in production. This is the vehicle that makes it possible for applications to become portable across platforms, scalable to meet dynamic demand, and available on-demand.

By packaging applications as virtual applications (also known as "virtual appliances"), organizations ensure that the application will remain manageable and controllable throughout its lifecycle. This article will explore a five-step framework for cloud computing adoption that begins where many organizations are today—at virtualization—and ends with true cloud actualization, which is the state most organizations ultimately want to achieve.

Next: Level No. 1: Virtualization >>