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## Integrating Your Business, IT, and Cloud Strategies 

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Business leaders want to develop more innovative products and services while continuing to reduce operational expenditures. However, given the fast pace of today’s complex economic environment, this task is often not easy. In order to remain competitive, business leaders need to approach each new opportunity with a well-conceived strategy that provides speed, flexibility, and scalability. 

The typical business is faced with a vast number of challenges: 

✓ Changing customer requirements 

✓ Increasing industry regulations and standards 

✓ The need for a mobile platform 

Businesses also need the freedom to use their existing resources in new ways to address these challenges. At the same time they must limit the risk of investing in new capital while speeding up the delivery of IT resources. 

When a new business strategy is developed, it’s critical to map the business requirements to the IT resources and capabilities. Increasingly, IT components incorporate cloud capabilities. When business and IT leaders collaborate, the organization is in a better position to achieve the greatest flexibility and agility. The results to the business can be significant because this approach allows both business and IT to focus on the customer experience and business outcomes. Based on the specific requirements for performance, security, scalability, and service levels, companies start their cloud journey in different ways. 

It’s no surprise that companies are bringing business opportunities and cloud computing models together to forge a unified and cohesive business strategy. Business leaders see the potential in utilizing a set of cloud foundational services — Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) — so the right cloud computing model can be selected 

