I disagree.

If you are going to do $10k in business with someone, then that's nothing. You 
probably pay more than that in rent each year.

If you are going to do $100m+ in business with someone, then you can specify 
all sorts of requirements in your RFP and vendors will make sure they meet it 
(and have the relevant contractual penalties in place). That covers your 
organisation. And the major players care when a 
BoA/Lloyds/Westpac/HSBC/whatever is the major bank/etc. in your region suffers 
some kind of loss. Which is why you don't hear about them.

Cheers
Ken


-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Scott [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Wednesday, 18 November 2009 11:51 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Re: Cloud computing... your opinions

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 9:55 AM, John Hornbuckle 
<[email protected]> wrote:
> There's no reason it has to be undefined and unverifiable, though. A 
> good cloud service provider can provide this.

  They should be able to; they rarely do, IME.  Most businesses have a general 
mentality of not exposing information about their own operations.  Some of that 
is fear of making it easier for copy-cats; some of it is a desire to sweep dirt 
under the rug.  At the same time, in order for an outside contractor[1] to be 
as defined and verifiable as doing it in-house, they have to be *completely* 
transparent.  So there's an inherent conflict.

[1] = In most use cases[2], "cloud computing" is just the latest euphemism for 
"outside contractor".  We've also seen this called "SaaS", "ASP", 
"outsourcing", etc.

[2] = There are exceptions.  They are a small minority.

> As someone else mentioned, reputable service providers are just as 
> concerned about the protection of their customers' data as their 
> customers are.

  I highly doubt this.  For a contractor, a single-customer data breach means 
you loose a customer.  For the business, that same data breach can mean 
anything up to going-out-of-business.  Sure, the provider has a motivation to 
do well, but not the same motivation.

  It's like the joke about bacon and eggs.  The chicken is not as invested as 
the pig.

-- Ben

~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ 
<http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/>  ~

~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/>  ~

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