You think you are cloud? Think again, says Forrester

NEW YORK, USA: With all the hype and progress happening around cloud computing, we know that our infrastructure and operations professional clients are under pressure to have a cloud answer, said James Staten, Forrester analyst in his blog.

"This is causing some unproductive behaviour and a lot of defensiveness. A growing trend is to declare victory — point to your virtual infrastructure where you can provision a VM in a few seconds and say, “see, I’m  a cloud.” But you aren’t, really. And I think you know that," he added.

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Being a cloud means more than just using server virtualization. It means you have the people, process, and tools in place to deliver IT on demand, via automation, are sharing resources so you can maximize the utililization of assets and are enabling your company to act nimbly.

Forrester report documents what it takes to be called a cloud:

Standardize your most commonly repeated operating procedures.

Fully automated deployment and most routine management tasks.

Provide self-service access for internal users via a service catalogue or portal. 

Business units are sharing the same infrastructure.

And according to the analyst firm, very few, five percent, of enterprise IT ops teams today meet these requirements.

Forrester has documented a maturity path for organizations that help you get to this point but don’t expect to get there overnight. It finds that it takes literally years to get cloud-ready. This means you should begin investing now in cloud knowledge by experimenting with cloud infrastructures and cloud-in-a-box solutions to learn how clouds actually operate and what the delta is between where you are now and where you should aim to get.