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Mel Indyk is the President of MIA Associates, a boutique strategy and technology consulting firm.   In his former life, he held a variety of senior level IT roles ranging from being VP/CIO of Bell Labs, and Interim CIO in Higher Education, to: re-
engineering Information Technology services and Project Management for over 100 CIO-IT programs.

When it comes to dedicated or managed hosting, and now, the evolution of cloud computing, Mel sees this as the IT industry going full circle back to many of the computing paradigms of mainframe computing.

Mel sees many opportunities in hybrid hosting solutions and recommend a simple framework to help you think through the best approach for your needs.

• Have a vision attainment:  have a written vision statement of what you are trying to achieve by going to a hosted or cloud solution.

• Seek specific productivity goals:  define what productivity gains you hope to achieve in a hosted or cloud solution.

• Realign your focus on key business areas: maybe you start with improving customer service, or perhaps having a measurable savings on buying a new server vs. having a hosted / cloud solution.  Maybe it’s scaling during a peak time of year and then scaling back when your demands for compute cycles or storage decline.

• Attain a transformational strategy: what’s your roadmap?  What resources are you going to need to get there? And what do you when you reach a certain milestone?  How will you continue to seek out process improvement?

• Make sure you get buy-in from the right stakeholders: before you go down the path of hosted or cloud computing, make sure you not only have buy-in from key stakeholders, but align their business and operational goals with the ones from the IT department as you make this shift.