As cloud computing moves beyond the definition phase into the adoption phase, Burton Group has identified five steps for building a better cloud adoption strategy. These steps go beyond current ad-hoc adoption methods to achieve real business objectives with cloud computing.

Burton Group research director Drue Reeves presented his recommendations in the session “Building a Viable Cloud Adoption Strategy” during Burton Group Catalyst Conference in San Diego in July.

“To be successful with cloud computing, CIOs must develop a thorough and rigorous adoption strategy that can prove value and be replicated,” said Reeves. “Now is the time to build a viable cloud strategy that takes into account the risks, but is fully focused on reaping the rewards for the enterprise.”

Burton Group recommends CIOs commit the time and resources needed to develop a realistic cloud adoption strategy by using a five-step program:

Pre-work: The objective is to identity key stakeholders and cloud computing objectives. The adoption strategy requires significant resources to perform business impact analysis, application assessment, cost analysis, and a vendor selection process. When identifying the scope of the effort the maturity of existing processes will impact the effort and resources required.

Business and Application Assessment: The objective is to determine what applications are cloud ready. This can be done in a four-part analysis: business impact analysis, application assessment, cost analysis, and the impacts on the organization.

Vendor Selection Process: The objective is to meticulously examine a vendor’s service. Cloud vendors details should be transparent and meet application requirements. The scenario may arise where the application is ready for cloud, but cloud is not ready for the application.

Residual Risk Mitigation and Limit Liability: The objective is to mitigate unavoidable risk. The best way to mitigate risk is through up-front planning, exit strategy, and cloud brokers and liability insurance, but some risk cannot be avoided.

Steady State: The objective is to inject cloud management principles into everyday operational procedures. Do this by employing sound cloud governance procedures and measuring how the adoption strategy is meeting the defined business objectives.

Burton Group defines cloud computing as the set of disciplines, technologies, and business models used to deliver IT capabilities (software, platforms, hardware) as an on-demand, scalable, elastic service.

To hear more about cloud computing from Burton Group Catalyst Conference, tune into Catalyst Live for a replay of panel discussion “Cloud, Law and Order,” discussing the legal implications of cloud computing and the enterprises.

About Burton Group

Burton Group, a division of Gartner, Inc. (NYSE:IT) company, helps technologists make smart enterprise architecture decisions in increasingly complex environments. Burton Group’s research and advisory services focus on technical analysis of infrastructure technologies relating to security, identity management, Web services, service-oriented architecture, collaboration, content management, data centers, and network and telecom. For more information, visit www.burtongroup.com.