Over time, cloud adoption will be driven more by the business model and the characteristic requirements of the workload, rather than about infrastructure efficiencies alone. As innovation explodes around cloud services, new solutions will emerge that support niche business issues or community requirements.

Business and IT leaders will have the ability to select cloud services that support very specific goals and requirements both in terms of functional attributes and business model goals. Services will be implemented in a mix of private, public, community and hybrid clouds to offer the optimal balance of functional performance, (vertical) application value and business risk .

Operationally, that translates into enterprise IT managing an assortment of cloud services as well as cloud technologies that are fit for purpose based on the workload, the application, the security requirements — even based on supporting communities that are bound together by common regulations, interests, or content. Diversity of cloud computing environments will mean complexity — more partners, diverse service levels, disparate reporting environments,  potentially a number of ad hoc relationships — a pretty difficult task to manage.

CSC recognizes that the common criterion across all cloud workloads is not specifically about functionality, or service levels, or even security, it is about transparency. Web performance testing in the cloud doesn’t require the same security as an ERP solution, so it is not about managing to a single security profile. It is about being given the visibility into subjective measurements of performance, compliance, security, etc., across any cloud, public or private, that is part of your IT delivery environment. Governance will become more important than ever before.

So CSC is developing an orchestration model where you can understand the capabilities of these clouds against various parameters, so that you can pick the right cloud for the right purpose, defining the right balance of functional requirements and business risk to bring the best solution to your organization.

This is a great value to CSC’s enterprise customers, allowing them to work with vendors of their choice while meeting their requirements for IT governance, allowing them to genuinely execute “The Right Cloud, The Right Way.”

Lori Salow Marshall is Product Director of Infrastructure as a Service for CSC Trusted Cloud Services. Follow her on Twitter at @bizdevexperts.