More businesses are seeking help with moving IT infrastructure from physical to virtual to cloud, as they realize just how many technologies and models need to be addressed in that process. Getting all the pieces to fit together in a cloud strategy can be difficult, and CIOs are being proactive in seeking cloud-computing service brokers to assist them with the transition.

"The idea is, [CIOs] aren't going to wait around for the big vendors to come up with the interoperability specifications, because the interoperability specifications won't be good enough," said David Broffman, director of the CIO Summit, who identified cloud consulting as a hot topic coming off of the event, held in Miami in late September. "[CIOs] are looking for strategies to maintain control over their IT infrastructure and this has expanded big time."

"They need strategies for the cloud, how to transition to the cloud in terms of contracts, forming the [service level agreements] and defining their own standards," said Broffman.

FierceCIO asked several cloud computing consultants: What should CIOs consider before implementing a cloud strategy?

Michael Parker, senior director of Services Marketing at CA Technologies

"We tend to see many organizations in the early stages of the virtualization and cloud adoption curve that are highly motivated but face a number of challenges that causes 'virtual stall.' Common pitfalls include staffing and skills issues, which tops the list of barriers to virtualization and cloud adoption because 'people do not scale'; line-of-business issues, where IT organizations face resistance to cloud adoption by the owners of the individual applications; technology platform hurdles, as companies try to manage the many hypervisor platforms available on the market today; and 'virtual sprawl,' which requires IT organizations find ways to gain greater visibility, control and assurance of their virtual deployments."

"The main challenge we see is that the problems and solutions around meeting the primary objective typically go deeper than the client initially understands. A primary driver behind this gap is a deep knowledge level of the technologies required to meet the business goals. Not having experience in implementing virtualized solutions, clients are not aware of the issues, nuances, etc. that can arise in their environment. In many engagements we will complete the initial task while also discovering many additional areas that need to be addressed as part of the overall solution."

"Furthermore, some engagements are designed with a heavy technical focus, but we often discover once the project is underway that the client has not reached a level of operational maturity (e.g. update policies, procedures, documentation etc.). Without an alignment of people, process and technology we find many clients will not meet their stated goal."

"Our one piece of advice would be to not to look at the individual components of adopting a cloud solution (i.e. storage). We see many customers moving along their 'cloud journey' who encounter obstacles because they have not taken the time to develop a holistic strategy, an actionable plan and an alignment of people+process+technology to meet their key business goals. If this critical step is skipped in the journey, there is a high probability that the roadblocks many organizations encounter will become insurmountable."

Michael Parker is senior director of Marketing for CA Technologies Professional Services. Michael supports world-wide sales and operations in the creating, development, messaging and positioning of consulting solutions across all products and service. 

Alan Wilson, vice president of Infrastructure Consulting for the Technology Services organization at HP (NYSE: HPQ).

"[CIOs] need help and guidance to break down the problem, to then articulate what parts of the business are more likely to benefit from a cloud-like environment--be it private, on premise (so they can control what they have and do it more effectively and efficiently at a lower price point) or truly go public--and to do that the control mechanism and analysis."

"CIOs should be able to show a solid financial view of why they're doing it and what the outcome is over a period of time; so, having the ability to articulate this using financial models ... This means presenting the business case back for private, or hybrid, or public clouds, and how that compares with existing IT."

"Once they've formulated a roadmap that can benefit their business, they may realize they don't have the ability, with their existing structures and team to go ahead and execute upon it ... They will need to be, effectively, their own integrator."

"Businesses need to be thinking about how they're going to run the cloud, not just how they're going to build the cloud."

"You've got to have a structured-services lifecycle approach to whatever you do. You just can't do something today and do it completely differently tomorrow. You've got to have a roadmap that brings together the technology, the financial, the operational aspects and the organizational aspects. That roadmap really must be in place. You then have to come up with a flexible design that over time will evolve as things mature in the marketplace, so you don't have to throw everything away."

"You have to have a solution architecture, which has a longer-term horizon to it, from a technology point of view in particular, that it can reuse all the components and reuse the process. So the concept of that service catalog becomes so important."

"Finally, build a solid implementation plan, so you can go from where you are today, to where you want to get to over that certain period of time."

Alan Wilson is vice president of Solution Infrastructure Practice for the Technology Services organization at HP. In this role, he is responsible for the overall direction and general management of the infrastructure consulting and project services worldwide.

Colin Lacey, vice president of Solutions and Services at Unisys

"[CIOs] must determine what parts of their business--whether client services or storage--would benefit from adoption of a cloud model. If they find that it would, they need to decide which cloud strategy--for example, private, public or hybrid--will best support their evolving business needs.

"Thorough up-front analysis of the need for, and potential benefits of, cloud computing will help enterprise users conserve the time and resources they could otherwise waste by jumping into a disappointing cloud initiative without thorough prior evaluation."

Colin Lacey is an international technology and services marketing executive with experience spanning consumer and commercial PCs, enterprise storage, servers and mainframes, and services to enable data center transformation. His specialties are solution marketing, technology strategy, portfolio management, and business development.

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