If clouds are interoperable, customers can at least move an application from one to another in case of failure, the alliance notes on its Web site. "Businesses using the cloud should be prepared for the worst," the group says.

But that doesn't mean avoiding the cloud makes sense, either, Boehme notes. ING already uses a mix of data centers operated by its own staff and data centers operated by third parties, he says. Cloud computing typically uses a multi-tenant, rather than single-tenant architecture, but that doesn't make it completely new and unfamiliar, he says.

Boehme has been with ING since August 2008, but has more than two decades of experience including stints as the CIO of Juniper Networks, Sage Software, and GE. Boehme recalls using the IBM mainframe Time Sharing Option earlier in his career, a feature that gives users concurrent access to the mainframe while making it appear to each user that no one else is on the system.

"I didn't know who was on that mainframe," Boehme says. "But the security infrastructure, and the risk management was already built into that."

Cloud computing isn't as sophisticated as the decades-old mainframe technology, but Boehme is expecting great things. He predicts companies to use a mix of external cloud providers as well as so-called private clouds, with applications being portable across all platforms.

"We don't believe you will see anybody participate with a single provider," he says. "We think you will have multiple providers, internal clouds, external clouds, hybrid clouds. ... We like the concepts and the flexibility that this provides. We believe this is as big as the Web was in 2000."

© 2007 Network World Inc.