New Research Reveals the Greatest Predictor of Cloud Success

By Allison Boccamazzo, TMCnet Web Editor

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that technology is not the only required asset to deploying a successful private cloud project. In fact, new research from the IT Process Institute (ITPI) has revealed that IT departments should be putting just as much as thought into the business side of this project as they do into its hardware and software.

“Cloud projects are dependent on business outcomes,” explains Managing Director of ITPI Kurt Milne. “Users having a strong experience strongly correlates with project success.” In ITPI’s survey, “Private and Hybrid Cloud IaaS: Project Success Factors,” 143 companies were asked which factors help and hurt them when working with the cloud.

“The pendulum swung into pinstripe territory for many top performers and organizations that reported a ‘significant improvement’ in areas like service quality, operational efficiency and business outcomes. Successful cloud projects generally enjoyed high visibility among C-level or line-of-business executives,” reports Datamation.

Furthermore, the survey found that businesses that employed cloud technologies for self-service deployment and testing experienced the most benefit from their IT investments, the site adds.

So what does Milne say is the greatest predictor of cloud success? An ‘external first’ strategy, which describes workloads that are tested or prototyped on a public cloud and then brought back in-house, as explained by Datamation.

Additionally, a top trend on the IT side involves experience with lifecycle management tools; so much so, that over 70 percent of top performers reported having experience with these tools or dev/text resources that mimicked their production setups. Conversely, only 40 percent of low performers could say the same – a very telling sign.

IPTI wraps up its report by warning IT managers that they should keep watch over their budgets, as many “sail over deadlines and incur big costs.” Over 60 percent of companies surveyed said they found a problem sticking to the schedule, and over 40 percent said they had completely gone over budget.

When it comes to making the most of your cloud deployment, consider companies such as Adaptive Computing (News - Alert), who just this month revealed its new Moab Cloud Suite 7.2, which works to make the most of your cloud by leveraging what you’ve already invested in. This way, you can better stay on track with your allotted finances.

Even better, it directly addresses these financial strains companies often face – and sometimes, succumb to – by boasting a periodic budget reset capability, which enables automatic resetting of budgets to accommodate the fact that budgets need to be reset at regular intervals. It also improves showback and chargeback reporting while allowing budgets to be set across multiple groups or accounts as necessary.

To learn more about all of Adaptive’s offerings, visit www.adaptivecomputing.com.

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