This IDC Business Value Executive Brief leverages IDC’s research into the value of cloud-based application development and integration solutions, including solutions such as IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) on cloud. These solutions not only enable application development in a hybrid cloud environment but also allow organizations to connect existing on-premise applications to cloud-based services. IDC’s research shows how organizations can achieve significant value across different areas of the enterprise by moving from on-premise-focused application development to cloud-based solutions such as IBM WebSphere on cloud. Organizations implementing cloud-based application development solutions reported achieving the following benefits: ? Improved ability to match application development capabilities to business demand by increasing agility and accelerating the application development life cycle. ? Facilitated business continuity and improved application reliability by reducing application downtime ? Improved productivity of IT departments by spending less staff time maintaining infrastructure ? Reduced IT infrastructure costs and components including the number of physical servers required to support application development