The Cloud - Panacea or Perilous?
The cloud has been touted as a significant revolution in computing - providing scalable, secure, and cost effective alternatives to owing and managing your own computing infrastructure. It has also been criticized for being insecure, unreliable, and a potential threat to the future of your business if something goes wrong.
So which is it? It can be both, actually.
Done right - with the right application, the right vendor, the right agreement, and with proper attention to issues like security, encryption, privacy, and continuity - it can work very well.
Done wrong - without those details being considered - it has the potential to cause things ranging from spotty performance to embarrassing data leakage to a business ending catastrophic failure.
The key is to spend the time up front to get it right.
(Cross-posted to Slaw)