Outsourcing contracts typically include detailed termination and transition assistance provisions that outline the provider's responsibilities regarding data return. Indeed, in many outsourcing contracts, the vendor agrees to provide the data promptly whenever the customer ask for it in the format that the customer requests-and the provider often covers the cost of doing so.

Given the maturation of the IT outsourcing market and the introduction of more standardized offerings like cloud computing, you might assume that negotiating IT service deals is getting easier.

The first quarter of 2012 showed a slowdown in the value and number of outsourcing contracts awarded globally, according to the quarterly Global TPI Index, which tracks contracts valued at $25 million or more. Total contract value across functions was $18.7 billion, a decline of 22 percent from the same quarter a year ago and 35 percent from the previous quarter.

In the traditional IT outsourcing deal, the vendor provides a service —managing servers, developing applications, monitoring networks —and the customer pays for it, whether at a fixed price, on a time-and-materials basis or a cost-plus model.

Andrew Wasser's perch affords him a broad view of the IT outsourcing industry. Wasser serves as associate dean of the Heinz College's School of Information Systems and Management at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where a third of the graduate students studying applied business and information technology are refugees from the IT services industry.

The outlook for the IT outsourcing market is not unlike the outlook for the economy as a whole: It's "unusually uncertain," to use U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's words.