"The key to a successful cloud computing solution is to address business issues"

All organizations are different, with each having different business and technical objectives depending on its size, industry, customer base, and geographical scope of operations. The notion to move to a cloud model may be driven from the top down by executives, or from a key business unit, or perhaps from the IT department seeking a more cost effective way to deliver service to internal and external customers.

Here are some recommended steps to design a cloud computing solution that meets all business and technical requirements:

• Determine business strategy and enterprise architecture requirements: The key to a successful cloud computing solution is addressing business issues before technical issues. Goals of the business must guide goals of the IT department when considering a cloud solution. Once the business strategy is known, understanding the IT environment and applications being used are a critical next step.
• Cost and risk analysis of moving to a cloud solution: A cloud solution might not be cost effective compared to a traditional, internal IT based solution. Organizations should analyze metrics for the pros of cloud computing, such as elasticity of computing power, leveraging already built out and established IT services, avoiding the costs of building and maintaining IT infrastructure.
• Determine which business processes can be successfully moved to the cloud: Look at all current business processes and update Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery plans for the cloud solution. Some non-mission critical IT business processes, such as access to documents already made available to the public, can be easily moved to the cloud. But an organization might hesitate moving its financial operations or databases to the cloud for security and regulatory compliance concerns. Another consideration is the ability and ease to move a process and/or data from the cloud back into internal IT, if necessary. That could be a daunting process for redeploying a data warehouse of multiple terabytes to physical locations distributed around the world.
• Select an appropriate cloud computing solution: Depending on the business process, there are several cloud options to consider. For non-critical processes, a public cloud solution may be the fastest, most cost effective solution. A private cloud might be necessary for a critical business process, especially for meeting the organization's security and regulatory compliance requirements. For organizations that wish to move multiple business processes to the cloud, a hybrid solution may be the best way to leverage the efficiency of public clouds while maintaining corporate policy and regulatory compliance requirements with internal cloud solutions. A semi-private cloud solution may be appropriate if like-minded organizations are willing to partner for an end-to-end cloud solution. A SaaS solution may be the best fit if an organization wants to leverage an application provided by a cloud vendor. 

Implementing the cloud solution
Once organizations have determined that the correct course of action is to move to a service-oriented business model with cloud computing as the delivery mechanism, the next steps involve implementing the solution.

• Analyse the current environment Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current IT environment, with inputs from CxO-level personnel, key business unit stakeholders, IT members, and representatives from the facilities organization.
• Create a business model for the cloud solution The next step is creating a business model for the organization's cloud solution. Focus on the specific applications and processes that should be delivered via a cloud computing model. The new cloud model will become part of the IT environment, not be a replacement for everything.
• Plan deployment of cloud solution Many SaaS offerings can be deployed in days or weeks. However large organizations should allow for a few months to one year to create a cloud solution that leverages IaaS, PaaS, or a private cloud architecture. The plan should articulate the conversion of the organization's current business and IT operations over to their cloud solution.
• Continue ongoing measurement of the business value of the cloud solution The model should be monitored and modified continually; this will help to accurately measure the business value of the cloud solution. This model should demonstrate the cost savings of using a cloud solution instead of using traditional IT methods and models.
• Manage the cloud environment Creating the proper methods to manage the environment is necessary to ensure that your cloud solution will continue to save your organization time and money-and maintain all required Service Level Agreements (SLAs).