Cloud Computing and IT Infrastructure Outsourcing: A Comparative Study

Cloud Computing has caught the imagination of the CIOs across the world with rapid scalability being the most important feature of Cloud Computing, with very high degree of provisioning capability from the Cloud vendors in comparison to on premise IT infrastructure. It provides for the shift of spend from capital expenditure in IT budgets to a more flexible and manageable operating expenditure for the CIOs. However, as an emergent technology, there are initial adoption level concerns that are associated with Cloud Computing in most of the companies. Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS adoptions have not been high especially in the large companies which continue to opt for traditional IT Infrastructure Outsourcing. This paper compares Cloud Computing Infrastructure as a Service-IaaS adoption, outlined through two cases of Cloud IaaS, with traditional IT Infrastructure Outsourcing outlined through four cases studies of traditional IT Outsourcing.