Organisations need to start getting to grips with imminent changes to the supplier landscape; that way, they will be ready to move if and when the time is right.

Nobody knows how fast cloud will mature or how extensively it will be taken up, but what is certain is that it will radically alter the dynamics of customer-supplier relationships. Even organisations that are on their fourth or fifth generation of outsourcing contract may find that in some ways they have to start again from scratch.