The challenges of the move from the desktop to the cloud

Presently there is an initiative to conform computing to the principles of pay as needed (cloud computing). Essentially this means that software is to be used as a service; inherently causing the software to be infinitely scalable and the increase (decrease) of resources usage is a matter of ad-hoc configuration. This seems well suited for small businesses or even developing economies. The largest benefit of cloud computing is the instant jump to level 5 of business process management. However significant questions should be raised and fully considered before the transformation from the on-premise IT infrastructure to the cloud based, software as service model. This paper will focus on those questions and will try to provide answers to them, based on our experience and research.