The clean slate approach is of course optimal, but in my experience not a viable option and something we certainly couldn’t do. But by all means if you have the chance, go for it and thank your lucky stars!

To talk specifically to your post, I’m not sure I follow the ‘things to watch’ mentality as much as I follow the ‘clean slate’ logic. That’s going to be a key to leveraging a cloud, did you start from scratch? With how flexible the idea is, scratch building will provide the best environment and can be grown from the seed into the mighty oak pretty easily.

Oh, and instead of thinking of IT as a cost center, tell business to turn off all their computers. What does their profit look like now?

Having now also seen a walk-through of the system in action I can confirm the end product is a great achievement – Stu and his colleagues deserve a hefty slap on the back for their work, and I sincerely hope they get to show this solution off to a larger audience.
It is a great example of how virtualisation coupled with well-thought-through orchestration and automation can enable orgs to “work smarter, not harder”.

(disclaimer – I work for VMware and Stu is one of my customers)