According to The Gartner Group, cloud service sourcing is fraught with potential hazards.

Companies should take steps to manage inherent risks and unexpected costs during the cloud services revolution, according to Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company.

"Cloud service sourcing is immature and fraught with potential hazards," said Frank Ridder, Research Vice President at Gartner.  "Cloud computing is driving discontinuity that introduces exciting opportunities and costly challenges. Organisations need to understand these changes and develop realistic cloud sourcing strategies and contracts that can reduce risk."

To avoid the potential pitfalls and hidden costs of cloud sourcing, Frank Ridder said that organisations need to ensure they understand the short and long-term implications of cloud services, on the demand and supply side, as well as on the sourcing life cycle itself.

More-detailed analysis is available in the Gartner Special Report on Cloud Sourcing:
www.gartner.com/technology/research/cloud-computing/report/cloud-sourcing.jsp.