There is no denying it cloud has moved beyond buzzword and become a key foundation element for over 40% of enterprise organizational strategies.   Making the decision to "go cloud" is the easy part.   Figuring out how to optimize and deliver on your cloud strategy is another discussion.

The "first wave to cloud" was focused on operational and service delivery measures such as reducing IT operational costs and improving organizational delivery to meet SLAs.  However, just when you thought you had a handle on these measures, here comes the second wave of cloud.

Reducing operational costs and improving SLAs has become minimum requirements just to get a seat at the table.     Being a "player" in the cloud market requires broader impact across the organization and more strategic measures of business success:   innovation and increased revenue growth.

If you would like to learn more, read the latest thought leadership piece on CIO.com.

Are you ready for the cloud?   You fully appreciate the agility, time to market and cost savings but perhaps you are uncertain exactly how to make these benefits a reality in your business.   Where do you start?   There are a few tough questions that need to get answered.  Among them are:

• What is the best cloud strategy to fit our needs?
• What business value should we expect from cloud services? How would we
  measure this value?
• How will cloud affect our TCO, SLAs, agility, customer experience, risk
  and other business factors?

Embrace the wrong cloud strategy and you might not realize the benefits that you were planning for.  But waiting on the sidelines is not an option as technology continues to move forward at an accelerated pace leaving your organization farther and farther behind.

Cisco Business Cloud Advisor is a joint solution between IDC and Cisco that analyzes your business as well as identifies KPIs that can be used to measure the success of your cloud deployment.  This free evaluation identifies KPIs that:

• Define expectations for how and where cloud can most benefit your organization
• Align your cloud strategy to your business and IT goals
• Shapes your cloud strategy while providing quantifiable business benefits for adopting private, public or hybrid cloud services

You will get concrete guidance based on IDC's unbiased research that illuminates the best practices for companies in your industry and geographic area.

Take a few minutes to take our short evaluation that can provide a sampling of Cisco Business Cloud Advisor Report.