Regulatory compliance is another key issue with the cloud, particularly for companies in industries such as healthcare and financial services.

Menefee says Schumacher Group asks for assurances of privacy and confidentiality with all services that store or could store patient health information. "We ask for various compliance certifications on an annual basis as part of our due diligence process," he says.

Rawlings is also sensitive about data privacy and security because its customers are in the healthcare industry, where regulations regarding data access and storage are particularly stringent. But it goes beyond regulations, he says; Rawlings is morally obligated to protect the integrity of the information.

"The data we have in-house has a very high privacy requirement, so we would have to be absolutely sure that the websites themselves and the pipe between us and the sites is secure" before being able to seriously consider using the cloud for healthcare data, Landgrave says.

Some organizations adopting cloud computing need to figure out how to knit together cloud and non-cloud environments seamlessly so that there's no negative impact on IT services to employees and customers.