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Right now, the buzz around cloud computing is endless. But, it’s just the latest trend. In the past, it’s been B2B marketplaces, best-of-breed solutions for targeted business challenges and even the internet as a whole. The hidden cost of innovation is that IT solution provider’s need to explain the value and viability of these emerging technologies to skeptical decision-makers who are heavily invested in the status quo. Eventually, you know, today’s innovation will become tomorrow’s legacy platform, but that doesn’t make getting over the hump any easier.

So, how do you approach a CIO or IT director with something new, like private cloud computing solution?

Well, cautiously.

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Virtualization is among the hottest technologies in the IT market right now. Even though datacenter penetration is still low, your competitors are pushing it just as hard as you are. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be the first person a CIO or other IT decision maker has spoke with about virtualization, so you need to make sure your message is a bit different — you need to make it pop. The easiest way to do this is to make it about the competition.

In your own market (i.e., among you and your competitors), you’re seeing the importance of virtualization skyrocket. Do the math — this means a lot of IT solution providers are talking to a lot of IT departments. Virtualization is on the move, and a CIO that doesn’t get on board soon enough will be left behind, leaving the entire organization at a disadvantage in the marketplace. A company that lags technologically will have trouble supporting its business users, serving its clients and managing its operations.

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Datacenter “greening” periodically goes in and out of fashion. Usually driven by broader economic factors, IT professionals tend to mull the notion of going green when the broader public debate over energy prices and climate change reaches a fever pitch. With the recent discussion at Copenhagen again bringing climate issues to the front of the global economic community, talk of green has again arisen in the IT world.

The latest from Forrester Research is that regulation won’t drive the adoption of green IT solutions. In a survey of IT professionals at 600 companies around the world, regulatory compliance ranked #7, garnering only 16 percent of responses. Unsurprisingly, cost drivers were most important. Sixty-six percent of respondents indicated that energy cost savings could lead to the proliferation of green IT solutions, with 42 percent citing the ability to cut IT operating expenses.

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