Cloud computing is one of the disruptive technologies (read some facts here) that is the new standard in the invisible infostructure. As Mark stated earlier on this blog, Cloud Computing is about trust and 'trust is a value I am choosing to rely on for anything I do on the web. Without trust, the web wouldn't have evolved into what it is today'. Trust is a good thing, however trust does not solve everything. By trusting a party you can help a party to exist (merely your trust consists of paying for their service), however you cannot prevent them to disappear from the stage while taking your Cloudy services with them in their exit.
Have you ever thought about that? The Cloud may be part of the ecosystem of Internet, however it is not unlikely, that, like a real cloud, it will start raining. After the rain stopped the Cloud will be smaller. What if your data / application, service in the Cloud will disappear due to the disappearance of a service provider. You cannot expect that all providers of Cloud services will keep on existing the next ten years (do you remember the free hosting providers Geocities, XOOM and Fortunecity in the late nineties? Geocities was bought by Yahoo, Fortunecity still exists, and XOOM disappeared as free hosting provider, and so did its data).
Currently it is rather cloudy and the Cloud keeps expanding, however it is a fact that the expanding stops and that some pieces of the Cloud will rain down. What kind of measures did you take to prevent that your data is lost or that you cannot use a service in the Cloud? What is your fallback for your Cloud usage or will it pour at your place when it rains?
