In opening more possibilities for where applications can live, the cloud has served as a catalyst for evolution in on-prem and colocation data centers. But the cloud is not only a catalyst, it’s a great option for most applications, and has become a competitive benchmark for IT leaders.

Enterprise IT is no longer only competing against TCO, flexibility, performance, and righteousness standards set by their direct competitors. They also must be good stewards of their company’s resources by deploying and managing infrastructure in facilities that meet the same benchmarks as the cloud service providers do.

We’ve put an interesting study together on this topic.