In this 13 minute interview with Dale Frohman of The Frohman Group , we discuss Cloud Deployment in the business.

Deployment of Cloud services is much easier in the small business space (under 100 employees), because typically this is not a complex network infrastructure. The first hurdle to Cloud Deployment is the complexity of the network environment.

Some systems just can not be moved to a cloud platform. Medium businesses (100-500 employees) may have legacy systems (like COBOL) that may take more work than is cost effective to shift to either IAAS or PAAS. Other application systems may be tied to other databases, which may mean moving one will require moving two or more applications or databases. It may be like pulling a string on a sweater.

Jim Meltzer of Ashton Metzler & Associates, says, "In order to successfully deploy Cloud-based services, Communications Service Providers need to develop a detailed business plan, a data center architecture and a management strategy."

Steven Taylor of Webtorials adds, "As we move toward cloud-based solutions, one of the most difficult tasks is defining how the network services that are used to access the cloud-based service and the cloud-based service itself interact. This is especially important and challenging in the definition of an appropriate Service Level Agreement."

Dale Frohman says the first question to ask is "Is it Critical or not?" Decide that before you ask "Can it go to the Cloud?" Your business SLA (service level agreement) may be more stringent than what the Cloud Provider will offer. That could prove disasterous.

I think most strategies will be Hybrid Cloud (like they are now), just because of network architectures, regulations, control issues and proprietary issues.

Speaking of issues, something that can fog up a Cloud deployment is Corporate Culture. As Frohman explains, as an MSP (managed service provider), he saw where employees who were unwilling to change had forces a company to move back to PC's from a Virtual Desktop rollout. Employees have to buy in to this Change in business. You can't gain on productivity when your workforce is blocking it. The future of the office environment will morph, but there are hurdles to how fast that it will happen in every business.