Via Joe McKendrick, I came across Charlie Bess’ post listing some metric suggestions for cloud computing adopters. Bess’ list:
- Provisioning time (down, leading)
- Service reuse (up, lagging)
- Utilization (hardware, storage…) (up, lagging)
- Uptime/hour (down, lagging)
- In house personnel dedicated to operations support (down, lagging)
- Business value generated per effort hour (up, lagging)
- Business value generated per watt consumed (up, lagging)
- % of IT budget dedicated to fixed costs and maintenance (down, lagging)
In reading the list, note the “items in parenthesis are first "the good trend" and if it was a leading or lagging indicator.”
This will be an important topic in 2010, and Bess’ list is a great starting point. I especially like the business value focus, and the recognition that cloud computing does incur in-house personnel costs. As Bess mentions, there needs to be more leading indicators, otherwise organizations might be inclined to stay with known costs, rather than introduce unknown expense, and of course, risks.
This is definitely a stream I’ll be following over 2010, the real-costs, value and risks. And how the value proposition changes with the element of time.
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