kent.kester (5/2/2011)
I think someone slipped up and let a marketing type look at a spec document for someone's network. They saw this cloud-shaped thing and decided it was marketable.Personally, I'm not trusting my corporate data to any server that I can't lay my hands on. There are federal laws and regulations (HIPAA, SARBOX, etc) that make me nervous about such things.
Amen!
I am a firm believer that a true cloud environment is a bad, bad idea. First, we no longer have control over the security of the data. Second, we no longer have control over the performance of the data store. Third, we no longer have what is almost a guaranteed connection to the data (our network almost never has issues, think Amazon before you - not referring to Kent here - debate this point!) Fourth, companies close, so we no longer can guarantee the longevity of our data, nor our ownership of it.
In my experience, companies who lose a customer do not really care how difficult it is for that customer to extract their data to load into the replacement system. This is far worse, because we aren't in a situation where we can just power the server on when we need it, we actually have to keep paying huge fees just in case we need to access historical data.
Now there are exceptions of course. I personally don't think it is a good idea now, and I have doubts as to whether it ever will be.
Dave