Virtualization and/or cloud computing are not silver bullets for your company’s woes.  Be smart about how you will support the business.  The challenge is for business leaders to communicate to IT the priorities of the organization so that IT can build systems which turn those into realities.  Too often, there is a communication breakdown between the business leaders and the IT leaders.

“Although cloud computing service providers can help companies cut IT costs, many large and mid-size companies can achieve equivalent or greater savings with in-house systems based on the same technologies. But there are no clear guidelines that dictate when a company should keep their systems in house, or when they should look for an external service provider, an IBM (IBM) executive said Tuesday.”

Link here.