Can you answer 9 cloud strategy questions?

CIO.com reported these comments from Joe Nathan (associate principal with The Hackett Group) “The rise of AI, increasing cyber threats, evolving data requirements, regulatory scrutiny, and the rapid advancement of cloud-native architectures have introduced new levels of complexity — and opportunity.”  The September 9, 2025 article entitled “9 cloud strategy questions every IT leader must answer” (https://tinyurl.com/4kxe7f3f) here are comments about “#4 Are we prepared to manage cloud costs at scale?”:

Developing a three- to five-year cost model is essential to understand the break-even period, steady-state benefits, and total cost of ownership of a cloud solution, Nathan says.

In addition, “many organizations face ‘sticker shock’ due to inefficiencies in resource provisioning and suboptimal architectures,” says S&P Global’s Kocherlakota, who advises implementing robust tagging strategies, adopting automated monitoring tools, and conducting regular optimization reviews.

“Clear visibility into consumption patterns, resource allocation, and usage metrics is essential,” says Nathan, noting that cloud financial management practices help maintain accountability and prevent cost overruns, particularly in multicloud environments.

Allocating cloud costs directly to business units or product teams also increases transparency and encourages more efficient use of cloud resources, according to Kocherlakota.

Here are the 9 cloud strategy questions:

1. Do we have an enterprise framework to guide cloud decisions?

2. How can we capitalize on multicloud without sacrificing standardization?

3. Do we have the talent and culture to innovate in the cloud?

4. Are we prepared to manage cloud costs at scale?

5. Is our cloud strategy truly advancing operations and the business?

6. How will AI impact our cloud architecture and governance needs?

7. Does our cloud strategy align with our sustainability goals?

8. Should our cloud-first strategy be cloud-only?

9. What happens if we need to move to a different service or provider?

What are your answers?