Cloud provisioning is akin to traveling through a tunnel with a series of steel doors ahead. As an enterprise or government entity moves into the cloud, various challenges must be faced and decisions made, regardless of whether private, public or hybrid cloud offerings have been chosen.

For the cloud provider, the exact nature of cloud provisioning depends not only on what cloud services are delivered but also on how they're delivered. For example, what percentage of high availability does the client require, what level of disaster recovery and what are the service level agreements? A cloud provider must take these additional service requirements into account, as the same cloud services may be provisioned differently based on them.

In a newly released white paper Addressing the challenges of cloud order orchestration and provisioning, I discuss the parallels of cloud and telecom provisioning, and suggest a possible way forward for providers of cloud services to address cloud provisioning complexity and ensure fast time-to-market. For example, a robust cloud provisioning system enabling maximum levels of automation and supporting "flow down" from SaaS to IaaS should include the following requirements:

• SME-driven to create the business logic
• Data-driven to react to data changes initiated by clients or interfacing systems
• Data validation to continuously validate the business logic throughout the provisioning process
• Non-linear approach to evaluate and react to a variety of variables
• Automated correction and cascading alarms to correct errors and notify identified individuals or groups
• Drill down dashboards and reports that identify issues and report on automated corrections
• State aware to ensure efficient use of resources and swift recovery
• Open system that easily interface with web services, SOA and legacy systems

Cloud provisioning is an often overlooked challenge. It must automate highly complex tasks, as well as provide up and down provisioning reflecting the "on demand" attribute of the cloud. Those cloud providers who understand and learn from telecom provisioning parallels will be in the best position to compete in the dynamic cloud computing market. For more information, also be sure to check out our cloud billing services and solutions.