Surviving Cloud - Success and Benefit or Challenge and Complexity

"Cloud based services" refers to a range of IT services delivered in a fundamentally different operational model. The characteristics of “cloud based” are now generally accepted to be: 
• on-demand with self-service, 
• via broad or effectively ubiquitous network access, 
• resource pooling, 
• rapid elasticity or expansion, 
• measured and metered service (NIST Definition). 

According to common wisdom, each of these characteristics implies a substantial potential benefit, however in practice organisations struggle to achieve the anticipated benefits, and many of the current generation of cloud transformations are mired in operational complexity, frustrated user experience and cost over-run. 

This paper examines the fundamental economics that underpin the potential benefits inherent in cloud based services, and relates the potential benefits to real world examples. While attractive and certainly popular, cloud based services are clearly not always the revolutionary panacea that many (especially in the Vendor community) claim. This paper goes on to examine the most common causes for the failure of cloud based services, once again citing a range of useful examples. 

The paper concludes with a detailed examination of agility (as the key benefit of cloud services), and an examination of the operational process changes that are required in order to ensure that the anticipated benefits of cloud services are in fact achieved.