Cloud Computing and the IT department

Cloud is about extending what you've already got, to make use of other resources. Mis-sold Cloud is about replacing what you've already got, somewhere you can't see it, connected by a link on which you are at best, a spectator, for more money, with security provided by promises instead of by a fire door and a steel server room cage.

Put that way round, refuting the pitch from that guy with the 80's tie and the Audi doesn't seem such a tall order.

In all likelihood, the eventual outcome will be a compromise businesses will agree that a particular job is a cloud "no-brainer" and that the intimate and seemingly permanent derivative risks of cloying outsourcing contracts are actually no safer for their business than the IT guys that these replaced. Indeed, some are a whole lot less safe, especially in a new fresh raw market without standards or regulation.

There is nobody else in your businesses, except you, who has the type of oversight that will extract value and sanity from, quite frankly, a tidal wave of evangelism and hype.