"We've taken an aggressive approach to monitoring our providers and vendors because everybody is at risk right now," Schumacher's Menefee said. "With smaller vendors who we work with, we're putting code in escrow accounts, and at a minimum copying all our data to on-premise. It may not be functional inside an application, but at least we have access to that data if we need it."

"The number one concern I'll have in 2009," he said, "is whether the software-as-a-service and cloud companies are going to make such drastic cuts in their research and development that their technology will stagnate -- that I'll be left with the same platform in 2010 as I had in 2009."

(IDC is a part of International Data Group, the parent company of IDG News Service.)