content_image/815042.jpg
## What are the financial constraints for the company? 

While it’s important to understand new business opportunities, it’s also important to understand the constraints that the business is experiencing. Understanding how the business needs to control expenses while increasing productivity and efficiency are essential in the planning for the cloud. 

## Is the company too siloed for the strategy? 

Many business units have acted almost as separate companies — each with its distinctive set of processes, systems, data, and way of working with customers. However, this approach may be holding the company back from leveraging all assets across the company. 

<img src='content_image/815042.jpg'>

If a company is too siloed, the cloud computing strategy can be structured to help create more cohesion across processes, systems, and data. 

## Is there an easy mechanism to encourage experimentation and innovation? 

It isn’t always easy to change. However, businesses that are successful make sure that leaders are encouraged to think in creative ways about potential opportunities. Can technology provide a mechanism to support innovation? If this is a business priority, the cloud computing strategy can provide enabling technology to support experimentation. 

## Implementation considerations 

After the business and IT leadership teams have a common understanding of the business drivers, creating a cloud computing strategy will be much more straightforward. Implementation considerations are based on planning for an environment that’s long-term thinking and an environment that’s not tied to a single project. 

## Evaluating reference architectures 

A reference architecture  is a best practice approach to creating a private cloud based on a composite of successful implementations. Therefore, reference architecture is a blueprint. While there isn’t single reference architecture, most models have many of the same components. These documents can serve as an excellent planning tool. 

