One of the many advantages of claims-based architectures is that they abstract away the details of their components, including where things are hosted. As long as services and identity providers are network-addressable, they can live on-premises and in the cloud and easily move between the two environment without changing the emerging properties of the system. The immediate advantage is that existing identity providers, typically on-premises, are readily available for the new applications in the cloud; on the long term, claims-based identity is a key enabler for incorporating the choice of deploying to the cloud in your current arsenal of IT tools. With claims-based identity, the cloud requires no special arrangements: things can fluidly move from distributed to centralized, following your own requirements and management style.
