Tier 3, the provider he used for a SQL virtual deployment, was good about explaining and documenting its security, he says, but still it wanted customers to take some responsibility. "Their stance was you need to take measures yourself," he says.

He says the IT department tries to be as flexible as possible to support projects, but the reality is that the costs of cloud services are difficult to project accurately. "It's really an unknown," he says. "If you use it for six months and it costs the same as buying physical hardware, then you have to switch."

in Network World's Data Center section.