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Source: http://www.rpath.com/corp/cloud-adoption-model

The cloud computing adoption approach

The cloud computing adoption approach

• Level 1: Virtualization. The first level of cloud adoption employs hypervisor-based infrastructure and application virtualization technologies for seamless portability of applications and shared server infrastructure.
• Level 2: Cloud Experimentation. Virtualization is taken to a cloud model, either internally or externally, based on controlled and bounded deployments utilizing the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for compute capacity and as the reference architecture.
• Level 3: Cloud Foundations. Governance, controls, procedures, policies, and best practices begin to form around the development and deployment of cloud applications. Initially, level 3 efforts will focus on internal, non-mission critical applications.
• Level 4: Cloud Advancement. Governance foundations allow organizations to scale up the volume of cloud applications through broad-based deployments in the cloud
• Level 5: Cloud Actualization. Dynamic workload balancing across multiple utility clouds. Applications are distributed based on cloud capacity, cost, proximity to user and other criteria.

View a PDF of the basics of the model.