In these tough economic times, it is increasingly common for C-level executives to come to IT saying: "I've read about that cloud computing thing. Why aren't we using the cloud instead of buying so many servers?" But is the cloud ready? As any good engineer would say, the answer is "it depends."

As technology continues to expand the definition of “service provider”, customers expect bigger and better service offerings. However, broadening a service offering brings with it new headaches and costs that threaten to offset the benefits of pleasing customers. Often, providers would prefer to accept an increase in customer churn rate than take on the risk of developing new services. In order to be successful, service providers must learn how to manage increasing complexity and retain technical flexibility while ensuring that their offerings will continue to evolve and grow with the customers’ needs.

The No. 1 business priority for CIOs in 2006 is business process improvement 1 — implementing technology to help the business become more streamlined and easier to do business with. The good news is that IT executives realize that collaborating with business leaders to drive business process improvements is vital to company success; the bad news is that even though business/IT alignment has been a top priority for the past eight years and IT organizations are transforming, the issue of business/IT alignment remains.