Most of our opinions are easy to understand considering current trends and best practices, but some go against what most people might consider to be the current direction of the prevailing wind. Over time we have learned to trust our instincts as time and again we find that eventually the rest of the industry eventually comes to the same conclusion.

For almost as long as we can remember we have told our clients to keep their precious data local and avoid the hype of the cloud. In short we firmly believe that sensitive company data belongs inside your firewall, not outside of it on some server hundreds of miles away.

Sure there are some company functions which seem to naturally lend themselves to deployment as web based services (sales and support are the first such processes which to come to mind), but in a recent article GNU founder Richard Stallman warns that cloud computing is "a trap".

The more recent trend of "local clouds" (defined as cloud type services running on a local server) is a more secure solution which can be an interesting solution for use in some situations.

Update 03/10/2009 - As if to make the point for us

Today it was disclosed that cloud-maker Google apparently allowed unauthorized persons to view documents for which they did not have proper permissions in a "small number of cases". You can read all about it here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/07/huge-google-privacy-blunder-shares-your-docs-without-permission/

Other recent articles:

Report Tempers Cloud Enthusiasm
www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?doc_id=175928&f_src=ieupdate

We are not completely against services in the cloud, this site operates in the "cloud", but you should be aware of the potential pitfalls and examine security issues seriously as it relates to your business and your customers.