In other words, organizations that adopt cloud computing will value business understanding of how things work over hands-on expertise with servers and SAP.

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In sequence, senior executives from Thomson Reuters, Xerox, State Street Bank, Invensys Controls, Pitney Bowes Wells Fargo, Sanmina-SCI and Marsh highlighted the business value of cloud computing.

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As far as the cloud is concerned, 2013 will be the year of the network, according to Joe Weinman, who is also the author of Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing.

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The increase in business agility and responsiveness that cloud computing makes possible shifts the strategic value of the CIO from a technical role to a business role.

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The key is to begin by defining an employee-centric cloud strategy that recognizes the value that cloud services can provide and that maps IT policies to business objectives.

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It has been building for the past few years and will most likely herald its full arrival in 2013: a perfect storm of out-dated organizational practices, new mindsets about what really adds value to business performance and the maturation of social, mobile and cloud technologies that enable the transformation.

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That focus on driving customer value via a new business and deployment model helped fuel the early days of Cloud computing and established a customer-focused ethos that is still present in most Cloud companies.

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Business-side executives overwhelmingly agree that the purpose of moving to cloud computing is to realize greater value, the survey finds.

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The key to achieving true business value, Wang added, lies in the ability of a company to exploit its cloud apps not just within a narrow departmental silo but across functional units enterprise-wide.

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