Since I mentioned the reasoning behind our sign shop's views on cloud computing, I thought I should toss in some information that is much more general to businesses of all sizes in regards to cloud computing since this discussion really has come to envelop more than just the sign industry.
I've been to a number of small businesses here locally and seen what they use for software systems and their backups (if they even have a backup!) A cloud-based system for these small offices would be a HUGE improvement.
Let's look at it from a standpoint of building your own cloud. Let's say a business with five employees had been backing up all their accounting and document files using DVDs. They now what to move to something more flexible, faster, and reliable instead of making four DVDs of information at the end of the week. If they wanted to have the features a cloud system for their data, they would first have to locate a remote site to set up some kind of file server system. Next they'll have the upfront cost of purchasing that server and all the networking hardware involved. But what if one server goes down? One of the big benefits of cloud computing is redundancy even if one site goes down. So the company needs to buy two, possibly three servers even that duplicate each other continuously to always be ready to take over should the first server go down. Not only does something like this take a lot of know-how that most likely this small business doesn't have IT staff to set up and manage, but it takes a lot of specialized hardware and software that can also be expensive.
So now they've spent thousands of dollars setting up this cloud system, and spent weeks configuring the local computers AND the network interconnect between and then migrated data all to move their data to a cloud server of their own making. That just doesn't make sense for a small business. I can understand larger business building their own clouds, but the majority of businesses out there by far fall in the category where this is just not feasible.
That's why it's handy to have cloud computing systems. They do all that for you, and basically you're just paying a rent/usage fee for access, space, and support on their servers. They set it all up, they have all the initial cost, and they are responsible for setting up all the configuration required and keeping the thing live as much as possible.
In the end, I think cloud computing solutions do focus on offering strong security and try to offer the greatest reliability available. Why? Because ultimately they are the ones responsible. They are responsible for keeping the data on their servers secure from theft, corruption, or intrusion. They are responsible for keeping the service online and available to customers. They are responsible for not losing customers' information.
I've talked with several people who were planning to run servers to work as an off-site backup space for several local business, but think of the liability that it poses. If you have sensitive business information for ten businesses running on your server, and it has a virus that destroys data, you're looking at possible lawsuits from ten very angry businesses for hundreds of thousands of dollars each or even millions! That's a LOT of responsibility to make sure you have things running right!
