Carpathia specializes in managed hosting services, specifically infrastructure-as-a-service.

And while "-as-a-service" and cloud computing are strong market opportunities for contractors, there are still many unanswered questions

"If you look at cloud, for example, one of the biggest questions that comes out immediately is: What is it, really?" Fox said. "There's a lot of different flavors of cloud — there's private cloud, there's public, there's hybrid, there's community."

And the definition of cloud can vary when the end user isn't a member of the general public but a federal agency, he added.