Staying aloft in tough times (The document comes from IBM)
Why smart,innovative businesses are turning to cloud computing

Table of Contents3
Introduction
4
Cloud computing—a smarter way to work
8
Innovation fueled by cloud computing
11
Reaching into the cloud infrastructure for services
12
A quicker path to market
13
Security strength in public and private clouds
15
The environmental impact of cloud computing
16
Readying the enterprise for cloud computing
19
Conclusion

Introduction
Digital technologies are transforming business.From the manufacture and sale ofgoods to energy conservation and financial services,business processes acrossthe industry spectrum are being digitized,infused with unprecedented speed,capacity and intelligence.While such progress creates exciting new businessopportunities and paths toward competitive advantage,a company’s underlying ITdelivery model must be resilient and flexible enough to support the associated andoften dramatic business changes.Cloud computing is one possible answer to the need for such flexibility,providinga highly automated,dynamic alternative for the acquisition and delivery of IT services.Today users are tapping into public and private clouds for computingresources and services without having to address the underlying technology.Companies are leveraging the massive scalability and collaboration capabilities ofcloud computing to solve problems in ways that just weren’t possible before.Theyare deploying new services with greater speed and without additional capitalinvestment.As IT budgets continue to be stretched,cloud computing is enablingCIOs to do more with less.Virtualization,standardization and other fundamentalfeatures of cloud are lowering the cost of IT,simplifying IT service managementand accelerating service delivery.