Lightning: It is interesting how fast the interest in cloud computing from buyers of outsourcing is growing. Every week I have discussions with organizations of all sizes about the viability of sourcing into the cloud. Is it ready to be an alternative? Well – examples like the Valeo deal of Cap Gemini and Google announced a few weeks ago are of significant size. Other enterprises are running successful pilots with cloud service providers. Things look promising, but then there is some disruptive lightning. This week I was talking with a service provider, who suddenly had to change their cloud based approach in a deal – as an international export law was preventing engineers outside Europe touching data inside Europe. We did not discuss all details – but this sort of lightning can be found in many places.

Thunder: While marketing and sales people, brochures and visionaries around the world bring the blue sky and the sun into the buyers life, there is also some ominous noise; the sound of thunder fed by scepticism. There is the thunder of those banging the maturity drum, which is still loud and hefty. While in some areas sourcers can leverage clouds already, there are other areas, which lack cloud based solutions. Another sound is the security sound. It has a high frequency and it is all around. It’s scary is that not all organizations can hear this high pitch – it is almost like the crisis put some earplugs into their ears. The last thunder sound is called integration. While cloud solutions can be bought easilty today, they still need to be integrated. An area where we currently see more questions than answers.

Heavy Rain: Not really. Clouds were born in a maturing industry – in a sense that provider/client relationships are based on solid service levels, reliable environments and based on value add. So not born by overheated atmospheres with electricity.  Cloud solutions which complement outsourced IT today have a good quality and maturity. But there is more to come as market gets more attractive. And it can start raining.

Solid sourcing strategies, which carefully integrate cloud based solution in the IT value chain, aligned to the real needs of businesses and a diligent cloud vendor selection can serve as an umbrella – as a protector for some of the risks which organizations face when thinking about sourcing into the cloud.