The debate over those savings, and if they're enough to justify the up-front costs, is a little clearer though.

Hardish Nandra, a partner at CSC, joined In Depth with Francis Rose to discuss how exactly to calculate cloud computing costs.

CSC, a technology contractor, has been working on a model — which Nandra said is in version 1.0 — to determine the true costs and savings of cloud computing.

The model revolves around adding up total-cost-of-ownership, or TCO, and the all-important ROI — return-on-investment and taking into consideration the size of data centers and technology "refresh rates."

Nandra discussed how the model was developed and how it could evolve in the future.