The hype around the cloud doesn’t always match an organisation’s experience. This was the case for Darryl Thwaits, CIO of Tiger Brands, who took the hard decision to cut ties with a single hosted provider and appoint multiple providers when the expected ease of the cloud suddenly blurred some very important lines.

“We had quite a traumatic and dramatic IT change this year that has taught me that one must never lose control of one’s environment,” says Thwaits. “I regard it as my fault for not being clear about who owns the IP around our data and infrastructure. We had great difficulty determining where those lines lay because it was not stipulated in the contract in sufficient detail.