I have the impression we're seeing a divergence between SaaS customers and IaaS customers, with PaaS occupying a less interesting middle ground.  Correct?

@Paul: I asked this question the context of cloud industry in Switzerland. It's good to see businesses using cloud services but what a country wants is to also develop it's own cloud vendors so that the IT imports don't rise a lot.

I don't think it's illegal to have your cloud vendor in some other country.

@Paul: I think it's only a myth that public clouds are any less secure than private clouds. It stems out of trust issues that people have that if something's not in their control and it's shared it's likely to be unsecured.

I believe that the use of SaaS and IaaS are all new dimensions that many customers are adjusting to know how to use and position to get the best value.As Mitch points out, one has to truly know how to design and use the technology in order to get the best cost/value.

I am of the opinion that we will continue to evolve with new models of SaaS and other technology structures in hybrid designs.  The new versatility, as pointed out in the article, opens many new doors.

DHagar

What are the rules about sovereighty and privacy about data in the cloud in Switzerland? That's increasingly becoming an issue, particularly for European companies. Since Switzerland has a reputation for privacy and security with its banks, it seems to me that it would be a great opportunity for them if they had similar levels of privacy for cloud data.

Cost is a major issue with cloud. The upfront costs are smaller, they're operational rather than capital, and you can pay for capacity only as you need it, rather than having to pay for the maximum capicity you need before you even need it. 

But there are other issues that might become more costly later, and vendor lock-in is one of those. 

"Vendor lock-in is certainly a risk of cloud. If you buy software, you have the software forever, but if you sign a cloud contract, you lose your application when the payments stop."

The challenge for businesses too is that these softwares are very expensive. With the Cloud,you can access softwares and applications as and when they are needed. Vendor lock-in as you rightly measured is a a very big and critical risk but as Charlote also noted, many users of the cloud are nor developing niche SLAs that will give them some leeway to move to other cloud providers without too much of a hassle. 

If the answer tthe first part of the question  is a 'Yes', wouldit make any difference to how Swiss companies appraoch cloud services? Ialso would like to know from Charlotte if having a national  cloud provider is better from from alegal point view than havning a cloud provider who is in a different geographic boundary?

The underlying fact about Cloud is that they lead toa very big economies of scale. I dounderstand the need for maintaining a private cloud but I just have a feeling that  

the cost to maintain such clouds does undercut  the economic benefit of cloud computing. Can we make public clouds more better and secure so as to see a reduction in the use and development of private clouds?    

Vendor lock-in is certainly a risk of cloud. If you buy software, you have the software forever, but if you sign a cloud contract, you lose your application when the payments stop.

The lines are getting blurry as software comes to require licensing. And without support, the value of software is reduced.

Local storage is an issue throughout Europe and the world, as enterprises want to be sure their data is stored in a favorable legal climate.