Ever feel like you're trapped in some kind of weird time warp circa 1849 and "cloud" is the new gold rush? I know I do. Case in point: I was at the Gartner Data Center show last week staffing the CA Technologies booth, and nine out of ten customers I talked to had some sort of cloud computing initiative underway. When I asked the follow up question, "Why?", the answers were also pretty much the same - some variation of BFC ("better, faster, cheaper" IT and business service delivery). However when I asked, "How do you plan on managing your cloud services and environments?", I either drew a blank stare or some sort of response like we'll use in-house point products or open source tools.

While cloud computing promises greater speed and agility for how IT delivers services to the business, it also introduces new levels of complexity - for security, availability, performance, compliance, integration, automation, etc. -  that require coordinated, comprehensive management that one-off, point products simply can't provide. My point being that in the mad rush to cloud computing, it's important to think about Day 2: How are you going to monitor, manage, secure and optimize the cloud computing environment you've just built, or the cloud services you've enabled for your customers and end users?

At CA Technologies, this is the business we've been in for over 35 years - helping our customers manage large, complex, heterogeneous IT environments. And we've made significant investments and advancements over the past couple of years to better help our customers manage and secure IT through this journey from physical to virtual to the cloud.

At the point, you're probably thinking, "Nice commercial Bill, but where's the beef?" (I.e. show me the proof!)

Just this week, we've made two significant announcements that help validate our cloud management strategy and execution. First, the IT analyst firm IDC has just released a report, Worldwide Cloud Systems Management Software 2011-2015 Forecast Update and 2010 Vendor Shares, that ranks CA Technologies as one of the top two market share leaders in the worldwide cloud systems management software market. Mary Johnston Turner, the primary author of this report, cites the rapid growth and importance of this new market in this quote from our press release: "This is still a fairly nascent market that IDC expects will experience rapid growth through 2015, by which time cloud systems management software capabilities will be on the must-have list for enterprise and service provider customers alike."

While recognition of our efforts by the analyst community is nice, if you're like me, you want to know how actual customers are using and benefitting from our cloud solutions.

To that end, Logicalis UK, a leading international provider of integrated information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and services, has now standardized on CA Automation Suite for Clouds as its preferred private cloud solution for building and managing private clouds on behalf of its customers. I think this quote by Chris Gabriel, marketing director, Logicalis UK pretty well sums up their rationale for why they went with CA Technologies as their partner for providing comprehensive, integrated cloud delivery and management solutions, "Our strategy is to allow customers to think about the delivery of ICT services, not about managing an underlying cloud infrastructure."

His quote makes me think of the telephone analogy - customers don't really care how the phone works; they just want to know that when they pick up the receiver, they'll hear a dial tone on the other end. I think this should be IT's mantra and ultimate goal with regards to cloud computing. Invest in market-leading solutions that help manage the mechanics and mask the complexity of actually delivering cloud services, and instead focus your time and effort on designing and making sure the services you're delivering are meeting your customers' and end users' needs.

To learn more about our comprehensive cloud management solutions, please visit: ca.com/cloud or follow us on Twitter @CAvirtualAuto and @CA_Cloud.