Address scenarios in which you may want to be a broker, and how to have a hybrid IT operating model in which you simultaneously consume services, act as an intermediary and provide services. Ask and answer the question, “How do we secure, manage and govern the hybrid environment?”

Financial Considerations

Cloud computing comes with significant financial implications, which IT leaders should understand and consider in their principles. Don’t believe the biggest myth about the cloud — that you always save money by moving to it. Instead, examine issues such as cost transparency, visibility, budgeting and predictability.

Organizations typically fund cloud computing from operating expenditure (opex) rather than capital expenditure (capex). However, changing everything to opex may change your organization’s financial profile. Also, IaaS is mainly aligned with hardware costs, so the prices have tended to go down slowly (inflation may be changing this), but SaaS operates as a subscription model that tends to go up. Having a cloud council member from finance can help you understand these implications and how they may influence your principles.

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