Recent developments in enterprise cloud computing reveal a concerning lack of attention to cloud governance, despite enterprises facing significant risks and potential losses due to outages, inefficiencies, and non-compliance. As enterprises migrate from traditional infrastructures to the cloud, they often do so without a clear strategy to mitigate risk, or they fail to set up an ecosystem that fosters innovation and accountability. That’s why governance has emerged as the most important topic in cloud computing today, and why I, alongside my co-author Meredith Stein, decided to address it in our new book, Unlocking the Power of the Cloud: Governance, Artificial Intelligence, Risk Management, Value.
The book proposes a framework for enterprises to think differently about how they govern their operations in a cloud-forward world. Governance in the cloud is the backbone of any sustainable, scalable, and secure cloud strategy. With decades of experience in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and risk management, Meredith and I felt this was not only a timely subject but a necessary one. Enterprises are innovating rapidly, but many do so without considering the potential long-term consequences of ungoverned cloud environments. We’ve seen those consequences firsthand through inefficiencies, lost revenue, reputational damage, and even catastrophic outages.
Governance is critical to cloud ecosystems
Cloud computing has fundamentally shifted how businesses operate. Unlike legacy systems where infrastructure and operations were controlled on premises, the cloud introduces new operational complexities. It democratizes access to technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced data analytics but also brings unprecedented risks. A single minor decision, from misconfigured security protocols to inadequate compliance measures, can trigger a cascade of failures across an enterprise.
