Sidebar: Cloud considerations

As businesses begin formulating a cloud strategy, some of the questions that company leaders may consider asking are:

CEO

• How can I communicate the transformational potential of cloud computing to senior management and the board?
• What business value does cloud bring beyond the IT benefits, and how do I identify and gain those benefits?
• How can we exploit strategic opportunities while managing risk to the business (finance, tax, operational, and IT)?

CFO

• How do I manage the unpredictability of costs in a pay-as-you-go model?
• What are the implications of moving to a service model from an accounting and tax perspective?
• How can IT costs reflect the needs of individual business units?

CIO

• Which of the strategic imperatives can cloud solutions help right away?
• What is the roadmap that creates incremental benefits on the way to adopting cloud computing?
• How can IT better align with product development to support our changing business model?
• How does our talent strategy need to change to support a cloud-based infrastructure?