But some companies are getting ready to dive in. Some form of cloud storage is likely to be a part of the data management plan now taking shape at Adventist Health in Roseville, California. It could be something as simple as hosting videos by hospital chaplains on YouTube, said Adventist CTO Greg McGovern. It makes no sense for a health care company to develop its own video player and hosting platform when it can take advantage of the most popular one on the market, he said.

FreshBooks, an online invoicing company in Toronto, is a beta tester of Rackspace's Cloud Files storage service and expects to start using it soon to store copies of large document files. That will save the company from having to manage the files and infrastructure, which is not FreshBooks' area of expertise, said CEO Mike McDerment.

"Being able to outsource that is a huge advantage," McDerment said. "Any business owner needs to figure out what business they're in."

But handing off any IT function involves some loss of control, and storage raises particular worries. For many companies, information is the core asset, and if employees and customers can't get to it, business grinds to a halt.

"Nobody's perfect. The best clouds in the world have downtime," acknowledged John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, a 10-year-old hosting company that has a cloud storage service in beta testing.