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Seriously, it’s like we’ve been living inside this album.

Interestingly, in all this talk of movement (or non-movement) to the cloud, security didn’t always dominate the areas of concern. I’m not suggesting that worries over security are a thing of the past, but perhaps the comfort level in that area is growing a bit. Maybe there’s a slight warming to the idea that for cloud service providers, ensuring stringent security is paramount — the now-aging adage that “cloud service providers can do security better than you can.” One CIO I talked to just today definitely subscribes to this philosophy and is grateful for it. Trusting his cloud service provider with security, he said, frees up his limited staff for what he views as more pressing issues like data analysis.

What I did hear more about on the cautionary front was vendor lock-in. To be sure, it’s not a new worry. In fact, it was a topic of discussion a few months back at a meeting of the Mass Technology Leadership Council. I just found it interesting that this, in my admittedly limited sample size, stood out. It makes sense I suppose, that even as CIOs get more comfortable with the idea of going to the cloud, they have an out once they’re there. One CIO I talked to plans for this by including a “how locked in will I be?” section on his vendor scorecards during the contract bidding process. For as carefully as you may plan, not everything that goes to the cloud stays in the cloud. Needs change.

What about you? What have you entrusted to the cloud? Are security concerns holding you back, or do you worry about being stuck once you get there? Perhaps it’s both, maybe it’s something else entirely. I’d like to hear what’s on your mind in the comments.

Actually, the title that SAP America Inc. (which commissioned the study) went with was a bit drier: Job Growth in the Forecast: How Cloud Computing is Generating New Business Opportunities and Fueling Job Growth in the United States. Still, the bullet points were pretty juicy (italics are mine):

• Eleven cloud computing companies added 80,000 jobs in the U.S. in 2010, and the employment growth rate at these organizations was almost five times that of the high-tech sector overall.
• Companies selling cloud services are projected to increase revenue by an average of $20 billion per year in the next five years. That has the potential to generate as many as 472,000 jobs in the U.S. and abroad at the same time.
• Venture capital investments in cloud opportunities are projected to be $30 billion in the next five years. That could add another 213,000 new jobs in the U.S.
• The economic impact for companies buying cloud services might be even more significant. Cloud computing could save U.S. businesses as much as $625 billion over five years, much of which could be reinvested to create new business opportunities and additional jobs.

Study authors that maintain cloud computing has greater potential for employment growth than the Internet in its early years. Another exclamation-point-worthy prediction!

Indeed, it was all so hopeful until a comment on the study in my Twitter feed gave me pause: “Is this just swapsies?”

An interesting question, adorably phrased. In other words, are these new jobs really new jobs for new employees? Or will they mostly be filled by people put out of work because of outsourcing to the cloud? You could be laid off, then get a job with a cloud service provider and technically end up working for the same people who dumped you in the first place. I’m not knocking the idea of “swapsies” — anything that gets people re-employed is a good thing. But it’s not the same thing as growth. Some cloud jobs could require unique new skills the laid-off workers might not have — but how many “new” jobs would that account for? 

Other data that gave me pause were those 472,000 jobs in the U.S. and abroad. How exactly does that big number break down stateside? And by abroad, does the SAP study mean low-paying offshore locations? Also, the technology savings generated by cloud could lead companies to create new businesses and add more jobs — or it could just result in companies spending less on technology.

What’s your gut on the job-adding potential of cloud? Is this a solid proposition, or do they have their heads in the — well, you know. Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Surely you’ve seen it on bumper stickers or tacked to a classroom wall — that ubiquitous inspirational utterance: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

At an event generously populated by cloud service vendors encouraging each other to ignore the CIO and sell to the business, what several CIOs said would have done the former first lady proud. According to the event’s preprinted agenda, the CIOs were there to chat about using Platform as a Service, or PaaS. Instead, they wound up championing the place of the CIO in the cloud and across enterprise IT.

In essence, they weren’t about to let the cloud services vendors make them feel inferior. Inspiring bons mots not your thing? How about a football analogy? These CIOs proved vendors can’t achieve a successful end run around your IT department if you’ve set up a strong defense. And better still, if you’ve put up enough offense to be ahead of their game already.

As with any winning franchise, staying ahead requires strong leadership and teamwork. Take Tom McLain, CIO at Old Mutual (US) Holdings Inc. His cloud computing strategy is focused on creating strong relationships with the company’s head of compliance and head of legal. As leaders, they set the ground rules for vendor interaction that are so necessary in their highly regulated industry.

There will always be “renegades” — the workers in the business who go off and find their own cloud solutions. But even in less strictly regulated spaces, there are ways to remain in control. One way is to play along with them. Larry Bolick, CIO at Boston-based Aquent LLC, noted that early adopters can actually be integral team players. Identifying those who are eager to get their hands on the latest app can be hugely important to your cloud computing strategy going forward. Bolick did this with a Skype pilot program years ago.

“Fast-forward to today, and those folks are out in the Google space trying all kinds of things,” Bolick said. Knowing they have support behind their exploration makes them less likely to sneak in their own solutions. If they discover something of potential value, he said, they bring it to him.

Another important thing to note about these CIOs: To them, “going cloud” wasn’t and isn’t drudgery, a chore or some sort of panic move. (OK, maybe there was a little panic there; the looming recession was a potent prod for many CIOs to adopt cloud services.) Rather, it was seen as a challenge, a problem to solve. And lo and behold, once it got rolling, they began enjoying the process.

This wasn’t simply creating and implementing solutions to save time and money. In fact, the act of going to the cloud was in and of itself an opportunity to be innovative. As a result, these CIOs are left with more time and tools to, yup, be innovative — and perhaps feel a wee bit superior.

Progressive enterprises are envisioning what their IT operations will look like in a world of increasing cloud service use, which was “highly unusual a year ago,” Pring said. As a result, Gartner is “seeing an explosion of supply-side activity, as technology providers maneuver to exploit the growing commercial opportunity.” There’s no doubt: With a forecast like that, cloud services is clearly a business to be in.

But — and it’s a big but — if we put those numbers on Gartner’s own hype cycle, the industry will soon teeter at the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” (the highest point on Gartner’s hype cycle new-technology adoption curve) And if the model proves true, 2015 looks like it may see a financial slide into the “Trough of Disillusionment” (the lowest point on the curve, directly following the high), perhaps owing to persistent data breaches and the associated financial liability for interruptions in the cloud that prove beyond one’s control.

So, what should an enterprise do if a provider goes down? Sue the provider, advised Robert Parisi, senior vice president and cybermedia product leader for Marsh Inc., an insurance provider in New York. Where lots of experts see grey, he sees black and white: “If you render the service and you fail to render it, and it causes direct physical or financial harm, that’s your responsibility,” he said.

Community clouds are forming to provide more assurances to customers in particular industries — financial and healthcare, mainly, said Tanya Forsheit, founder of the InfoLawGroup in Los Angeles. Perhaps these will populate the “Slope of Enlightment,” (the upswing in the hype cycle curve, following the Trough of Disillusionment), where interest begins to build again as cloud providers “compete to provide better security, privacy and better assumption of liability at a price — of course, at a price,” she said.

Over the course of the next five years, enterprises will drop $112 billion on Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) combined, Gartner estimates. Financial services and manufacturing are leading the spend, followed by communications and high-tech industries. The public sector also is clearly interested in the potential of cloud services, driven by a federal government administration that has all but washed its hands clean of owning data centers.

The trend to cloud adoption can be attributed in part to financial turbulence over the last 18 months, but more fundamentally to the challenges of managing complex, custom, expensive IT solutions in-house, Pring said, “while cloud computing services have matured to become more appropriate and attractive to all types of enterprises.”

However, “many enterprises may be examining cloud computing and cloud services, but are far from convinced that it is appropriate for their requirements,” Pring said. He sees this as an opportunity for traditional outsourcing providers to retool their offerings into utility-based cloud services, while others wonder how the deeper issue of shared liability will be resolved.

Only then will we all be able to relax on the “Plateau of Productivity” (when the technology is mature on the hype cycle).