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By Laton McCartney
So-called cloudsourcing combines the traditional outsourcing delivery model with the tangible benefits of cloud computing. It's where the cloud meets outsourcing, and it's different than cloud brokering, where the broker serves as an intermediary between end users and cloud providers.
Proponents of cloudsourcing such as Peter Coffee, director of platform research at Salesforce.com, see the approach as something that outsourcers and systems integrators can't ignore.
"Cloud computing moves IT up from the cottage industry of hand-building your own data center, to an industrial model of far more efficient systems that are managed by full-time experts on a far more cost-effective scale," Coffee told CIOZone. "To complete the picture, customers are looking for industry-specific expertise in combining the best available services to solve specific problems -- and every systems integration firm, of any size, that wants to be relevant in years to come is building a cloud services practice to perform that task."
Others such as Jerry Durant, managing director of the Certellus Corp. and owner of the International Institute for Outsource Management, say that while cloudsourcing has the potential to become a viable sourcing approach, it likely has a long way to go before gaining real acceptance.
Perhaps, but some vendors such as Appirio have been offering cloudsourcing solutions for several years, and a number of cloud providers including Google, Amazon and Salesforce.com are currently providing the services that make up the cloudsourced model. In fact, if you're currently using e-mail from Yahoo or Google, you're already cloudsourcing your e-mail. Additionally, Google and other vendors such as Zoho provide hosted business apps.
To varying degrees then, cloudsourcing is already here as an option. Here are four factors for CIOs to consider in assessing its potential.
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