Cloud computing was initially sold to businesses as a cost-effective way to quickly scale up and down their IT capabilities on an as-needed basis, offering near unlimited computer capacity with a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Rather than run software and systems in their own hardware, commercial cloud users tap computing capabilities from providers such as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Companies today are compiling massive amounts of data in cloud storage services, and feeding it into increasingly sophisticated software and analytics tools designed to generate customer and market insights, among other benefits. They are also turning to multiple cloud providers, rather than relying on one cloud, for different systems and applications for different business areas. All of this can run up costs, corporate technology leaders and industry analysts say.

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