Another year has passed and chief information officers have a bit more information about this thing called "the cloud." But many CIOs still haven't made the leap, partially because comparing internal IT services and cloud-based services is so difficult.

While many organizations are considering a move to the cloud, less than 20 percent have actually completed cloud implementations, according to Symantec's recent "State of Cloud Survey."

There's a lot to think about, from current operating expenses to unanticipated recovery costs if something goes awry in the cloud. In this FierceCIO SoundOff, IT professionals share a few kernels of wisdom as they make their way down that long and winding journey out of the server room and into that cloud in the sky.

The danger of the cloud is that it could just move our stovepipes to a more accessible environment...If we have a situation where we have a thousand instances of the cloud created, then we have a management issue...Standing up interrelated sets of shared services requires a culture change. People don't think in these terms easily.

- John Teeter, CIO of the Health and Human Services Department said at an event covered by FierceGovernmentIT

We need to get to a point where, when we move to Windows 8 there's nothing on your desktop. We want it to be that you get your new operating systems or if you get your new Mac you set it up and you're done. All this stuff on the machine has got to go and that's where we're going to go: It's on the web. And once it's all on the web we won't go back there. Once you go to work in the cloud you're not moving anything back to your desktop.

People just expect that always-on performance. We're deploying this through the organization and it's this idea that your phone, the web, your email--it's all linked together.

- Terry Kline, CIO and VP of IT at General Motors, said while speaking at FedTalks

Like so many other technologies, cloud computing has its place but it is not ubiquitous in its application. For example, applications that are sensitive to input/output operations may not be good candidates for cloud storage, and there is the cost. If you need a lot of storage for a long time, there may be other cost effective options.

If you want burst capacity for testing, seasonal needs and the like, cloud can be very cost effective and the rapid availability of capacity is very attractive. When combined with a more stable base of "permanent" capacity, it can be a powerful use of cloud--both from a capacity and financial perspective.

[But,] like so many other "new" technologies, many providers have applied the cloud label to a lot of old fashioned models in order to appear contemporary.

- David A. Watson, COO of MedeAnalytics told FierceCIO

The reason to go to the cloud is purely economic. Eventually, it is the right answer for just about all of IT. It has made sense to go to the cloud for 10 years, but adoption has been so slow. The answer always comes back to concerns about security. Organizations don't realize they have the same concerns in-house...

If you have an SLA that says I will compensate you by this dollar amount for this amount of downtime, that, in effect, is insurance that the service provider is providing. I have not seen any SLAs that address the issue of security breaches. A provider is unlikely to say it is going to cover the costs of a security breach without [spreading the risk]. 

- Dr. Alexander Pasik, CIO for the IEEE, said in a FierceCIO interview.

We have a very metric-driven, total cost of ownership model that says, 'if we have a server in our data center that's more than 4 years old, we're going to spend more on [operational expenses] than we will in [capital expenditures] to replace it.' So when a server is 4 years old, we're taking it and we're replacing it with a 15 to one ratio. So for every 15 servers we close we replace with a more efficient one.

So with this refresh we're really reducing our footprint. Once you've got that, you start virtualizing--and you get a lot of 'not my app, my app clearly can't be virtualized.'...the next step is to build that automation layer on top of it to build a cloud. A private cloud is what we're most likely to have because we've got this large footprint and large space. It doesn't make sense for us to go to a public cloud and pay back service.

- Diane Bryant, CIO at Intel, said while speaking at FedTalks

Cloud computing is truly transforming the IT business. It is difficult to say which is more compelling--the cloud's significant scalability and rapid deployment, or full transparency for managing operational costs. For many, controlling and reducing capital expense (the expenditures used to acquire physical assets, including both equipment and office space) is uppermost, while others argue meeting demand is the foremost concern. The cloud addresses both and is clearly becoming vital to how we align IT to support mission and business requirements.

For example, the deployment of private cloud services at DHS enables the Department's many components to outsource hosting and other services capabilities to DHS's two Enterprise Data Centers (EDCs). This model enables components to pay on a per-use basis, rather than standing up isolated capabilities throughout the organization that duplicate efforts and costs. In fact, early projections for these services look to yield cost avoidance savings of 8 to 10 percent once we fully transition to private cloud infrastructure services.

- Richard Spires, CIO for the Department of Homeland Security, said during congressional testimony

If we're doing cloud purely to save money, we're going to fail. You've got to look at it as a large investment in resources. And that will be the challenge...We have to be careful about what expectations we set until we define our strategy.

- Air Force Brig. Gen. Steven Spano, Air Combat Command Director of Communications A6, said during an event covered by FierceGovernmentIT. 

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