It is IT's responsibility to educate and equip the CEO on the strategic benefits and ROI of cloud deployments.
- The keep it short and simple (KISS) principle applies to the CEO. Understanding the benefits associated with cloud typically begins by understanding and agreeing on what a cloud really is. Software as a service (SaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as service (IaaS) are different cloud service models. To complicate matters, computer resources can then be on premises – or off premises – and can spread across private, public and hybrid cloud infrastructures.
Keep the educational session relatively short with the CEO by asking if the AppStore has changed the way he or she consumes and use applications. How long did it take to set up a Google email account compared to an internal Exchange email address? As a last resort, just pose the question, “Should I continue to buy $8,000 servers that will take one to two months to provision and will be obsolete in two to three years, or should I look at paying a monthly fee and have someone else refresh and maintain them?