This presentation was delivered in front of an audience of IT personnel in December 2011.

There is unprecedented change happening across the IT industry. Cloud computing, mobility, analytics and the social enterprise, force IT to rethink how services are delivered to the business. Cloud computing, in particular, engenders change at all layers of the IT stack, from infrastructure, to applications, to the endpoint. On one hand, change brought about by cloud is a positive force, delivering higher IT efficiencies, faster deployment times and reduced costs. On the other hand, change, if not managed properly, results in more time spent on maintenance, increased system failure and higher costs. On the way to cloud, it is important to watch out for a number of pitfalls your IT department could slip into. In this IDC study, we present major fault lines in cloud deployments, and offer frameworks to consider, to avoid such gaps.