Many organizations have been moving their servers/applications to a cloud environment to optimize the use of computer and storage infrastructure. Using infrastructure resources in a pooled/shared environment generates cost savings.

This, however, is only one of the advantages the cloud can deliver. There are other cloud advantages such as the two described below, but it's important to note they don't come automatically. An application must be adapted for the cloud before it can reap all of its benefits.

• Cloud bursting and elasticity: These attributes give an application the ability to automatically demand more computing resources to support traffic increases. This is important for applications (or websites) with frequent, sudden dramatic peaks in usage. In the case of a website, for example, think of a news or sporting event that creates a big buzz for only a short period of time.

With these attributes, the application or site can automatically "order" more resources only for the time needed, seamlessly providing an optimal user experience while minimizing costs.

• Multi-site operation/redundancy: This capability enables an application to be run from multiple locations and automatically fail over to an alternate site should a problem occur at the primary site. Many organizations often assume that the cloud delivers this capability automatically. However, as we have seen from some of the major outages of popular gaming sites managed by public cloud providers, an application must be aware of this feature; the functionality just doesn't happen by itself.

Considerable investment might be required to adapt your business applications to take full advantage of these features. As organizations look to rationalize the number of applications they support, developing new "cloud-ready" applications is one approach. CGI has a methodology to help clients optimize their applications portfolio to determine the best approach for their organization and get their applications "cloud ready."