The impetus for change right now is

The impetus for change right now is seen predominantly from a
costs perspective (even though, as we discuss later in the document,
the promises from a technological functionality perspective are
equally attractive), as organizations increasingly discover that their
substantial capital investments in information technology are often
grossly underutilized.

One recent survey of six corporate data centers
found that most of the servers were using just 10–30% of their
available computing power, while desktop computers have an
average capacity utilization of less than 5%

Equally pertinent
are the maintenance and service costs that have proved to be a
drain
on scarce corporate resources.

A recently conducted survey by Gartner
Research indicated that about two-thirds of the average corporate IT
staffing budget goes towards routine support and maintenance
activities [21], which does seem anachronistic in an age of globalizedand cutthroat competition — as the CEO of a cloud platform provider
commented recently, “If you woke up this morning and read in The
Wall Street Journal that, say, Overstock.com has stopped using UPS
and FedEx and the U.S. mail, and had bought fleets of trucks and
started leasing airport hubs and delivering products themselves, you
would say they were out of their minds