I have always had a certain fondness for paper. Thanks, Donald ============================= Donald E. Eastlake 3rd +1-508-333-2270 (cell) 155 Beaver Street, Milford, MA 01757 USA [email protected]
On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 3:19 PM, George Bonser <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> 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. > >
