Re: what they've outsourced is completely out of their control
You're confusing the concepts of cloud and outsourcing. With cloud, the end-user has control (or should have) and can change things as required. The cloud data centre can be physically located in a facility in the UK and many are.
Outsourcing is a different prospect. What usually happens is high-up financial bigwig says, we need to cut costs. Why are we paying so much for IT? It's just computers after all. Outsourcer comes in and says, yes we can cut your costs drastically. Everything OK. So contracts are signed and existing staff are either sacked or moved over to the outsourcer. Sometimes they will stay, but often they will either go of their own accord or be sacked as they're too expensive and their job can be done by someone in India.
The benefit of this is obvious to the financial guy - loads fewer people on the payroll means far less spending.
The big difference between cloud and outsourcing is with outsourcing you remain tied into your existing kit, which will probably still be physically located somewhere reasonably locally. The new administrators will be trained how to use it, but will be far from being specialists. They will do whatever works to get the job done and on most legacy kit, this is a bad thing as it leads to performance or availability issues in the future. I've seen it myself - passwords and ssh keys shared across an entire enterprise, SAN switches with a single zone "because it's simpler". Uncommented scripts and undocumented procedures, and naturally, the outsourcee has absolutely no control over this. Additionally, none of the outsourcer's staff have any understanding whatsoever about the business and can't correlate or conceptualise what they're doing with the needs of the business. Nor do they care as they're being paid crap. Yes, Indians also need to feed and clothe their families.
On that point, don't take this as a dig at Indians. I know plenty of Indians who are very skilled and knowledgeable: they're usually the most frustrated by negligent bosses and the lies and deceit. The problem is the diminishing role of the administrator, which applies there as much as here. Admins are seen by upper management as expendable - they're the guys who just push buttons and do the manual stuff. They're ripe to be replaced by machines or moved to a lower-cost country. In reality a good admin knows how their domain fits into the bigger picture, and has the freedom to constantly evolve that domain to fit the needs of the business. This is rarely the case though: such roles are often left to architects, who introduce rules and processes, some necessary and others not.
So the admin role is diminished to the point that nobody really wants to be one. Salaries are far too low: I saw a very demanding looking job in London on Linkedin recently - £35K. Really?
Floods in India are a tangible way of showing how businesses lose control when they outsource, but there's a hell of a lot more to it than that. Unfortunately, it's going to take the loss of a business or two before something's done about it and people are held accountable for their negligence and greed.
Anonymous because I know decision makers who have outsourced their IT.