Applying Cloud Computing to IT Management

I found a paper I’d written as part of a webinar on cloud last year. It’s a quick overview intro and overview for the “IT Management” crowd:

This brief paper provides a working definition of “cloud computing” and then discusses three areas that IT organizations must target for change to gain the full benefits of cloud computing:

IT management at large scale, without IT intervention – the efficiency of a cloud rests on operating at large scale and especially with as little human intervention as possible.

Configurations Management & Automation – The configuration and provisioning needs of the cloud must be highly automated and often assume less than perfect process and diagnostics.

Delivering Frequent Functionality – Taking advantage of the cloud depends on delivering applications in a rapid, Agile fashion, which depends on automation being an enabler instead of yet another moving part to wrestle with.

Disclosure: the webinar this came from was sponsored by CA Technologies.