This IDC Presentation looks at how ready CIOs and IT executives are for a full-scale cloud initiative. Through a survey of 64 U.S. and Western Europe CIOs and other senior IT decision makers that IDC issues in spring 2012, we are able to provide IT executives with a look into where their peers stand with respect to their cloud strategies.

According to IDC's 2012 U.S. Vertical Survey, the average U.S. organization has 6.13 cloud computing services running. We do see a few more cloud services running in larger organizations. Organizations with greater than 5,000 employees have an average of 11 cloud services running. But considering the average IT organization is initiating 46 new internal IT initiatives in 2012, plus the dozens of ongoing initiatives, 11 cloud projects seem small. This raises the question, "What is holding back further adoption of cloud services?"

Moving to cloud is more than simply signing a service contract and accessing your technology. If an enterprise is to roll out cloud computing as a strategic initiative in its organization, there needs to be a road map for where cloud will be most beneficial and where the risks of public cloud will be tolerated. A cloud deployment involves multiple factors — establishing cloud architecture standards, establishing a cloud migration path, and establishing terms and conditions for public cloud, as well as updating the service management processes and having the right cloud skills in place. However, these efforts do not happen overnight.