In this scenario, new applications are placed into production in an operations infrastructure that can support elasticity, complex topologies, and automated administration, while the existing applications continue to operate in the older, static operations environment. One might think of this as building an add-on to the existing data center environment, which operates by new rules.

In a way, this scenario is consistent with the history of computing. New computing platforms don't displace what already exists; the platforms accrete to what's in place. What commonly happens is that most new applications are deployed on the new platform, while existing platforms are limited to minor upgrades to existing applications. And, of course, over time the new platform represents the vast preponderance of the total number of applications.

This is an attractive scenario, in that it reduces overall disruption and provides a good deployment option for cloud-developed and -based applications. It avoids the challenges associated with the impedence mismatch of the previous scenario.

Two things to watch out for in this scenario:

First, the disconcerting way in which applications edge from "development" to "roduction" without an official recognition or acknowledgement. IT operations may find itself responsible for applications that it had no idea were going to move into production, requiring agile, elastic infrastructure. That is to say, IT operations may find themselves challenged to provide a production cloud environment well before planning to do so. This "premature" productization will inevitably cause problems and accelerated catch up.