> > Sure, but balance that with podunk.usa's possibly incompetent IT staff? > It costs a lot of money to run a state of the art shop, but only > incrementally more as you add more and more instances of essentially > identical shops. I guess I have more trust that Google is going to get > the redundancy, etc right than your average IT operation. > > Now whether you should *trust* Google with all of that information from > a security standpoint is another kettle of fish. > > Mike
I agree, Mike. Problem is that the communications infrastructure that enables these sorts of options is generally so reliable people don't think about what will happen if something happens between them and their data that takes out their access to those services. Imagine a situation where several municipal governments in, say, Santa Cruz County, California are using such services and there is a repeat of the Loma Prieta quake. Their data survives in Santa Clara county, their city offices survive but there is considerable damage to infrastructure and structures in their jurisdiction. But the communications is cut off between them and their data and time to repair is unknown. The city is now without email service. Employees in one department can't communicate with other departments. Access to their files is gone. They can't get the maps that show where those gas lines are. The local file server that had all that information was retired after the documents were transferred to "the cloud" and the same happened to the local mail server. At this point they are "flying blind" or relying on people's memories or maybe a scattering of documents people had printed out or saved local copies of. It's going to be a mess. The point is that "the cloud" seems like a great option but it relies on being able to reach that "cloud". Your data may be safe and sound and your office may have survived without much wear, but if something happens in between, you might be sunk. And out in "Podunk", there aren't often multiple paths. You are stuck with what you get. Or your cloud provider might announce they are going out of that business next week.
