It is the delta of effort in terms of skills, abilities, experience and technology that the cloud adopter needs to deliver a functional service to their own “End Users”. This will be potentially a major area of cost to the cloud adopters. But it's also the delta of opportunity in terms of 'room' to innovate.
==Cloud Adoption Strategy==
Some of the steps which need to be followed in order to identify the relevant business scenario for leveraging cloud are:
[[Image:cloud-adoption-strategy.jpg|center|600px]]
1. '''Access:'''
::a. Application portfolio to identify core and non-core applications
::b. Map the scenarios relevant for cloud adoption
::c. Identify business processes which are more suitable for cloud adoption
::d. Evaluate the cloud vendors for strategic and tactical use scenarios
2. '''Validate:'''
::a. Justify the cost benefits and business case
::b. Perform pilots and proof of concepts to identify functional gaps and assess user experience
3. '''Technology:'''
::a. Changes to be done on the organizations policies and procedures
::b. Governance and operations
::c. Standardization across various cloud projects
4. '''Execute:'''
::a. Migration and Integration
::b. Co-existence and switchover planning
[http://www.infosys.com/cloud-computing/white-papers/realizing-value-proposition.pdf Source: www.infosys.com]
==Cloud computing applications in different industry segments==
