One of the purposes of the cloud, whether it be private, public or a hybrid, is to provision some aspect of IT as a service. This service enables a non-IT professional such as a departmental administrator to provision an IT resource without involving an IT professional as an intermediary. This has a number of benefits.

For example, the non-IT professional does not have to wait until the IT pro has time to help, as he might have to if his "A" priority task is a "C" priority to IT. In addition, such services let IT workers better use their own time on higher-value tasks that generate greater value for the organization.

However, although businesses can certainly reap benefits from cloud services -- including enhanced efficiency, because of less time, work or expense to do a particular task, and effectiveness, because of being able to do more of the right things that add value -- providing a service is not easy.