Re: Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder | Technology | guardian.co.uk

I can't imagine my employer deciding to allow company
e-mail to be dependent on some detached 3rd-party ...

I can see that. A company that provides software to help secure corporate data will have a different attitude than one that provides software to implement scalable Web interfaces - the type used to implement cloud computing, for example.

In the case of Google, it seems that a bit of paranoia is justified. If you build an email, document, or group calendar database on their server, how do you get your data back if you want to bring it back in-house? I'm not aware of any built-in "export" features, for example. Plus, Google and Yahoo seem to have a business model geared toward profiling customers by mining their data.

On the other hand, cloud computing offers economies of scale. IT budgets are spent on powerful desktop & laptop systems, and PC applications, which are the most costly type of computing available. A 3rd party service provider may come along and offer a comparable solution at a fraction of the cost. And some companies are less concerned about privacy than others.

My attitude is somewhere in the middle. If my data is private and secure, and not mined for ulterior motives, and available for me to export on demand, then I might go with a 3rd party service provider.

Nathan.