Anyone putting info in the cloud is a moron. If you like your information being PRIVATE keep it IN HOUSE. Period. Hire or train good IT people instead of outsourcing your security. For a company like Netflix etc ok I get it. You're serving data all day, not really trying to protect it like credit cards, etc. But for personal or company info to be in the clouds? You should be fired for being stupid and have no business being in IT. It will never be hack proof if it's in the cloud.
Toms keeps pitching this cloud crap, and it is ridiculous. I pay no attention to the IT posts now because of this. It's almost as if their IT side here, is paid to pitch clouds, cloud certs etc. STUPID. Apparently I'm not alone, as most of those posts have ZERO comments on them... Well, because any decent IT guy knows you don't want ANY data in the cloud that you actually want protected.
MS heading to the clouds...LOL. This tells me one thing: My comments that OpenGL, WebGL, HTML5 etc will take over gaming via Android, linux, SteamOS etc are correct and MS is losing the desktop along with Intel. They are now totally defensive and reactive just like any empire who has sat too long on the throne and became complacent (IE Buying nokia to sell your OS because everyone has android which is free - too late, just like buying yahoo to catch google - two losers, BING/YAHOO don't make a winner). I look forward to the new regime which will also usher in a HUGE user base of units for game devs to make money on and hopefully better/LONGER games at some point (less risk with so many units to aim at). We should get more unique titles eventually instead of Call of Duty 65/Battlefield 39 or whatever...LOL. Little indie devs can make some great games that will make them millionaires. Write for the API's I mentioned instead of DirectX and you can port everywhere cheaply and easily which helps the little guys get on the map in a way that they never could years before. These API's allow you to shoot at a few Billion units rather than a few hundred million PC's, a few hundred million consoles (~85mil each and all needing a different version and far more coding) etc. It is far easier for them to make money without WINTEL/DirectX being dominant.
First games to help make windows/Wintel less appealing. Then watch as apps follow making Wintel...Kind of like RIMM etc
But I expect both to survive, just my kids or their kids might not even know what windows looks like as they may never see it and may never own an x86 chip.
Like drwho1, I'll build a nas if needed (and am looking finding a great one now). They are cheap enough now, that cloud storage is pointless to me even if I thought it was safe. For around $650 you can get 4x3TB drive and a nas which is more than enough for my needs. Anything outside your house, or outside your business doors is OUT of your control. 2013 the year of hacks? ROFL@clouds futures. Even big companies can't seem to keep data safe inside or outside (I think due to crap IT but whatever), so best to trust yourself and train employees properly. I've been in multiple companies where servers were months out of date on updates etc and management seems to have no clue this is the case, which usually happens when they weren't IT themselves at any point in their careers but just managers in general. Police your IT or get police'd (so to speak) by China hackers etc...
At this point your IT manager should probably have a background in IT security or servers at least, or prepare to be screwed soon.