• Cloud Computing White Papers
• Business Scenario Workshop Report
• Building Return on Investment from Cloud Computing
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Building Return on Investment from the Cloud
• Discussion: Financial Value Perspective of Moving from CAPEX to OPEX and Pay-as-you-go
• Cloud Computing Key Performance Indicators and Metrics
• Discussion: The Importance of a Business Perspective of the Cloud
• Conclusions
• References
• About The Open Group
• Acknowledgements
• Strengthening your Business Case for Using Cloud
• Cloud Buyers' Decision Tree
• Cloud Buyers' Requirements Questionnaire

The Cloud Work Group

Building Return on Investment from Cloud Computing : Executive Summary

This White Paper presents the initial conclusions from The Open Group on how to build and measure Return on Investment (ROI) from Cloud Computing. It was produced by the Cloud Business Artifacts (CBA) project of The Open Group Cloud Computing Work Group.

Cloud Computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction [1]. This enables users to avoid over-provisioning and under-provisioning, to improve cost, revenue, and margin, and to provide new business services based on new ways of operating.

This White Paper:

• Introduces the main factors affecting ROI from Cloud Computing, and compares the business development of Cloud Computing with that of other innovative technologies
• Describes the main approaches to building ROI by taking advantage of the benefits that Cloud Computing provides
• Describes approaches to measuring this ROI, absolutely and in comparison with traditional approaches to IT, by giving an overview of Cloud Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics

The result is an analysis of how to build and measure ROI that will help businesses to reap the benefits of Cloud Computing, and take advantage of its potential for incremental improvement and disruptive transformation of business processes.