Hello Roxanne. I appreciate your comment. I love this quote.

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." -- YogiBerra

In theory, users should be in control. That is part of the great potential of the cloud computing model. But in practice, there are limits. German citizen data can't be stored in a cloud outside Germany. If you work for a major healthcare provider under HIPPA regulatory guidelines, and you have unencrypted patient data on your laptop, you get fired.

The key to success in the cloud era, is to give users the ability to self-service within boundaries. If developer wants to deploy a healthcare application for dev or test with dummy data, a public cloud environment may be a an option. But if they then deploy with real patient data, the Phoenix data center may be the only allowable choice.

CloudCenter balances the "give users what they want, when they want it" mandate, with the corporate governance and security mandates that are reality in the current business environment.