Recently I gave a presentation at an international conference on the cloud, and gave it my usual emphasis on simplicity and clarity. I wasn’t talking to IT people, but to accountants, county managers, election officials and treasurers, so they were not highly technical folks.
Which doesn’t mean they can’t comprehend the cloud.
What seemed to impress people most was the eminent understandability of the topic. The issues are clear: cost, availability, productivity, compliance, security. All of these can be addressed, and in fact some good methodologies are being developed for cloud operations.
Check out one of them, “IT Risk: Your Audit Checklist” at
http://www3.cfo.com/article/2012/6/the-cloud_audit-checklist-for-public-cloud