Riscos Potenciais Inerentes à Computação em Nuvem Explorados por Meio de um Estudo Delphi

Information Technology (IT) is becoming a utility and, in this context, IT services in its mode called "cloud computing" are playing a growing role. This kind of outsourcing has proved advantageous in many ways, despite the existence of both barriers that oppose contracting this sort of services, and inherent risks. In order to explore in greater depth the issues related to the advantages, barriers, and risks, we carried out a research project that included a Delphi panel in which Brazilian experts and scholars were involved and whose steps and conclusions regarding risks are described in this article. The Delphi panel led panelists to suggest 15 risks, which were merged with other ones extracted from the literature and, after all, the top 12 risks, according to panelists' opinion, were selected and ranked. In the final ranking, is evidenced that operational risks stand out from other ones, as shown by the fact that four out of the top five risks are operational.