Recommended Reading: IT Business Edge covers the challenge of cloud management in this recent article.
"The cloud challenges business-as-usual because it impacts designs and architectures, funding models, provisioning and procurement, service response levels and SLAs, as well as people, policies and business processes," says Marion Howard-Healy, senior consultant at UK market analyst BroadGroup. "The on-demand, self-service aspect of the cloud introduces a new operating model for users because it brings together infrastructure and business rules and processes. This is a profound change for enterprises because it aligns what IT produces with what the business consumes and leads to much closer working between IT and the business units."