Cloud computing is having a really buzzy, hyped up time at the moment. We're all being asked to consider working in the cloud, and by 'all' I mean individuals working from home right up to huge international corporations.
For those who've had their heads in the sand recently rendering clouds, like almost everything else, out of view, cloud computing is essentially defined as the provision of services via the internet rather than run locally.
Its advantages are things like low cost and no-maintenance regimes. You rent storage space and computing power from a provider, and to them you pass on the headache of ensuring everything remains up and running.
Relatively low level cloud services include Google's online tools for calendaring, document creation, email and so on. Increasingly, mega IT corporations are seeing a benefit from offering cloud services. For example IBM recently announced it has opened four cloud computing centres. And Microsoft and Amazon are other well known names in on the act too.
But wait a mo.
Should we really be thinking of putting all our sensitive data, all our computing services, in the hands of a third party? Never mind the recent well reported spate of data losses from within company's own IT systems. How much less control do you think your company would have if its data were managed by, and secured by, a third party?
Data security issues are only one potential concern. What happens if your cloud service falls over? Or if an internet problem means you can't access it? It could be a case of 'the network's down' writ very large indeed.
For some sobering thoughts read the words of Richard Stallman, campaigner for internet privacy. They are at the Guardian web site.
They sound like perfect sense to me.
What do you think?