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The potential of Cloud Computing is unquestionably a game changer — especially when you can combine the cost and speed-of-deployment advantages of public cloud services with the power to granularly choose deployment and ownership options.

This sort of Shape-Your-Own Cloud alternative can make a huge bottom-line difference, as one of our clients recently reported . He cut his overall IT spend by 66 percent and has also reduced his maintenance costs by 99 percent — yes, you see that right: 99 percent. Plus, he has seen a year-over-year CapEx savings of $200,000. And best of all — his IT staff is now focused, as he says, “where it should” — on supporting end-users.

Once you find a Cloud services provider willing and able to precisely design and customize Cloud capabilities to address your organization’s unique needs, you can put your organization on the path to achieving the flexibility, scalability, cost reductions, efficiencies, redundancy, and disaster recovery protections it needs — without overspending on overcapacity.

If you find yourself chafing against the limitations (and risks) of public clouds, it’s probably worth a moment of your time to stick around and find out about what I call shaping your own Cloud .

By shaping your own Cloud, you’ll get…

Modest cost — because you’re accessing pooled resources, but only the resources you need (on demand) when you need them (measured service),
Rapid, elastic provisioning of those resources — because they reside on a sophisticated infrastructure designed to automate configuration and provide broad network access,
The ability to customize the precise capabilities you need so you get the Cloud services you want how you want them – including ways that enable you to keep using and deriving value from your existing systems and applications, and
The power to choose and even combine Cloud deployment options, to ensure your IT environment is as efficient, productive, and affordable as possible.

By now, you’ve no doubt heard all about public clouds — those cast-in-concrete, one-size fits-all services to the general public or a large industry group. This is what many people think of as Cloud Computing — a monolith.

But Cloud Computing is far from monolithic. In fact there are many types of Clouds. Here I’m focusing on the three major approaches to Cloud Computing …

By any measure, Cloud Computing represents a big change in how IT does things — and by definition, change carries a friction quotient. What’s the friction quotient when it comes to Cloud Computing? Here are a couple of takes, where you’ll notice a few common themes:

This one, from IBM’s 2011 Tech Trends study , shows that concerns about security are top-of-mind for those moving to Cloud Computing …