Many factors need to be considered when a company decides it wants to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing. The decisions an organization makes will be instrumental in its ability to obtain the expected value from cloud services or solutions. 

According to research by the Gartner Group, the worldwide public cloud services market is expected to grow to over $266 billion in 2020. This represents a 17% increase compared to spending in 2019. While software as a service (SaaS) is the largest market segment, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is growing faster than any other component of the cloud computing paradigm. It is expected to reach $50 billion in 2020 with 24% yearly growth. These numbers illustrate the fact that many enterprises are trusting their infrastructure with public cloud providers.

Employing cloud resources such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) can lead to significant cost savings for most companies. The decentralized nature of the cloud presents new challenges as multiple entities may be responsible for an organization’s computing infrastructure. The issue of governance over the cloud environment is a critical factor in the success of an enterprise’s cloud initiative.