The cloud brings certain benefits and risks. Applications deployed by a competent IT department will be less risky than a cloud implementation, with better integration, better support, better migration path, and comparable cost. If only all IT departments were competent. This leads to the flip side of the coin; certain situations where the cloud compares favorably to the "preventers of information services".

The things that IT departments can do to outperform the cloud are the same things they need to do for long-term survival. With any luck, the cloud will let the business process of evolution kill off the weakest IT departments.