Dive Brief:

• IT organizations are turning into cloud service brokers accountable not only for tasks, but for outcomes as well, according to a new report from Frost & Sullivan that examines the service broker model.

• It is becoming more common for IT organizations to act as a service broker to the business, particularly as more businesses are adopting "IT as a Service" models, according to Lynda Stadtmueller, VP of cloud computing services at Frost & Sullivan. "In this role, IT employees select, deploy and manage cloud-based services to optimally meet the objectives of their new business stakeholder 'clients.'"

• ​Among other things, the cloud service broker role requires "continually monitoring and tweaking cloud workloads to improve performance or costs," according to the report.

Dive Insight:

Cloud-empowered capabilities are allowing companies to use technology for its strategic value. But implementing a cloud strategy can be difficult.

Dedicating IT personnel to managing the process makes sense and allows them to focus on strategy and deployments rather than more traditional IT tasks. This is especially important as enterprises continue to reduce the number of workloads housed in on-premise environments.

It is becoming more common for executives to approach technology investments for their strategic value. Cloud, in particular, is a lure because of its ability to process large computing loads and offer more analytical capabilities.