To fully benefit from cloud computing, decision makers need to understand the role of workload automation and the challenges they face in taking their existing and future workloads to operate in a cloud. They also need to evaluate vendor strategies that will enable them to successfully gain all the benefits cloud computing has to offer. An abrupt change from traditional operational models to cloud computing is risky and unsound.

This paper discusses workload automation and job scheduling as it pertains to cloud computing and helps enterprise IT leaders understand the workload automation landscape by raising questions they need to carefully consider for long-term success of their datacenter workload automation strategy.