In a nutshell, cloud computing is an approach to computing that leverages the efficient pooling of an on-demand, self-managed virtual infrastructure, consumed as a service. Cloud computing allows IT organizations to increase agility and often lower costs. This allows them to anticipate and respond to business needs more effectively—and thereby create competitive advantage. We don't just build solutions for cloud. We build solutions for your cloud. We know that different businesses will approach cloud computing in different ways and for different reasons.

What is a Private Cloud?
Private clouds or internal clouds operate on private networks so resources are only accessible by a single company. Over 45% of enterprise deployments are private clouds because of their advantages in data security, corporate governance and reliability.

What is a Hybrid Cloud?
Hybrid clouds combine the benefits of private and public clouds, and are growing in popularity, with nearly 20% of enterprise deployments using this model today. Hybrid clouds offer flexibility and choice of deployment methods between public and private clouds, and maximize value without compromising on performance, control and security.

What is a Public Cloud?
Public clouds offer IT resources as a service through external service providers and are shared across multiple organizations. 35% of enterprise deployments currently use this model.

Getting started in Cloud Computing

There are four typical ways in which enterprise IT organizations start with cloud computing:

1. Supporting isolated projects with limited scope and budget
   26% of enterprises start experimenting with cloud computing through project-based initiatives with limited scope and limited budget. This is where IT services support isolated projects or environments from the cloud. Testing and development, pre-production/staging, quality testing and assurance, and load testing are all low risk areas that IT teams are more likely to experiment with.
2. Providing business applications as a service
   25% of enterprise IT organizations start their journey to the cloud by delivering business applications to users as a service. Most start with non-mission critical applications such as email, HR, or collaboration software and experience increased flexibility and performance as a result.
3. Re-architecting IT infrastructure services
   39% of organizations begin their journey to the cloud by creating an IT infrastructure transformation initiative that re-architects their infrastructure services for cloud computing. This requires more strategic planning than some of the other typical starting points, but doing things like implementing a portfolio of infrastructure services to support multiple applications or creating a high level services roadmap can help you accelerate the delivery of IT as a Service.
4. Creating business-transforming initiatives with organizational impact
   The most strategic entry point to cloud computing also brings the most business value. 10% of organizations go the route of having a business-driven initiative to increase agility and responsiveness to market changes. These types of initiatives affect almost all levels and processes within an organization and come with a high level of executive involvement.

Are you ready for the Cloud?

Before you begin or continue further on the journey to your cloud, it's important to know how ready your organization is to adopt cloud. By answering a series of questions within each of the following categories, you will get an assessment of your current cloud maturity, and clear recommendations for next steps to help you reach your desired goals.

• Strategy
  Aligning business needs with IT capability.
• Process
  Streamlining and automating processes to achieve business agility.
• Architecture
  Establishing an enterprise architecture for this new IT infrastructure.
• Technology
  Designing and deploying your technology infrastructure from virtualization to cloud.
• People and Governance
  Creating the roles and skills necessary to ensure company-wide adoption, and the accountability framework and policies for stakeholder collaboration.