If you aren't talking to your customers about their cloud initiatives, rest assured someone else is.

Earlier this year rightscale.com released their yearly survey of 1002 IT professionals which were asked about the adoption of cloud and cloud technologies within their companies. The report states while private cloud adoption fell from 77% to 72%, hybrid cloud adoption grew from 82% to 85%. This indicates a large number of companies are trying to answer the question, "how do I go from the traditional on premise environment, to a cloud environment? What is the in between step?" Customers are now coming to understand that there is a give and a take with cloud. Moving to quickly to a cloud environment can be costly, and problematic. On the other hand they can't lag behind the industry or, most importantly, their competition and continue to keep everything on premise and miss out on the advantages cloud has to offer. Whats the solution then? The short answer? A hybrid cloud. A solution that can allow them to keep an on premise environment while also allowing them to play and see the amazing benefits the cloud has to offer is a conversation you should be having with your customers, because I can say with absolute certainty that if you aren't, your competitors are.