Architecting Cloud Computing Solutions

Assessing risk

The first step in managing an organization's risk of adopting cloud computing is an assessment. The assessment should evaluate financial, culture, service integration, regulatory compliance, business continuity, and business or mission system quality.

The impact of financial risk is always critical as it directly drives the return on all investments associated with a cloud computing transition. When using cloud services, costs are directly related to workload and revenue. While this model does reduce some financial risk, it affects other factors differently. The critical assessment factors for cloud ROI risk probability are the following:

• Utilization
• Speed
• Scale
• Quality

These four factors drive ROI directly because they affect ...