In this scenario, software and QA engineers are provided a private cloud for development purposes, but when it comes time for production deployment, the application is operated according to the existing processes (which were, remember, created to manage static topology, inelastic applications in an often-process heavy ITIL-like environment).

We believe the satisfaction level to this strategy depends upon what proportion of newly-developed applications assume and use the elastic automation associated with cloud computing. Selecting this approach might depend upon organization-specific projections of future application elasticity requirements. If the proportion of applications requiring elasticity is rather low, this scenario might be perfectly acceptable. For the majority of newly-developed applications, static operation techniques would be appropriate. For the minority of applications that require elasticity, an exception to provide a more agile operations environment could be made and pertinent measures taken.

The challenge with this scenario is that it is in conflict with what we see as the increasingly common nature of future applications; that is, the nature of applications is changing, with more highly variable workloads, much larger scale, and more complex deployment topologies that are more difficult to manage in a manual fashion. In a phrase, there is an impedence mismatch between the future of applications and the operational assumptions of this scenario.