Back to some points made earlier about cloud computing, but this time with a real-world example from the continuing saga of my wife's new small business. Having got over the intial Google index hump, we are actually starting to see some business even in these difficult times. For various reasons I won't bore you with I decided I wanted to move the website to another hoster that I was already using for the integrated CRM and accounts system (OK, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, the customer and prospect lists and a few receipts and invoices ;-)
At the same time I was going to consolidate a few legacy sites I'd built up over the years.
I agreed a termination date of the start of May with the hoster. Came back after Easter - no website, and a message saying my account had been deleted. OK, anyone can make a mistake, please get it from the backup.
Email today says, "sorry we don't have a backup".... even though a daily backup regime was part of the service I was paying for. Sure, I wasn't paying much, but that's the whole point of the cloud isn't it - and this isn't a Fred in a Shed hoster, they host thousands of sites, win loads of awards etc.
Being a belt-and-braces man I do have a backup - but of course it's a month old, because I didn't need to do dailys, that was the hosters job.
As I said in the previous post, data security and availability in the cloud comes down to who you choose to trust as a service provider and the SLA you have with them. But don't trust that either - expect them to mess up!