* Software-as-a-service: Applications with a Web-based interface accessed via Web Services and Web 2.0. Examples include Apps, SalesForce.com and social network applications such as FaceBook

A slew of investors are exploring cloud options while Amazon and Google already have important cloud offerings and companies such as and are investing billions of dollars.

Looking further into the future, standards will emerge that reduce some of the uncertainties of contracting for cloud services.What Are the Risks?

As with any service, with the cloud you should always make sure that you know what you are paying for and what measurements exist to show you are actually receiving the service. You should pay careful attention to:

* Service levels — Cloud providers may be hesitant to commit to consistency of performance for an application or transaction. Understand the service levels you can expect for transaction response times, data protection and speed of data recovery.