The Pros and Cons of Cloud computing

Much has been said about cloud computing, so what is it? Cloud computing is a simplistic way of saying your using someone else’s hardware and specialized licensed software from the internet to do home and business tasks. A good example is your music being stored for access on Amazon.com’s “Cloud Player” that you use with your I-phone on your way to work. You have a custom or random mix of music that you have created and stored, but you do not have it on your I-phone, you "access" it through the "Cloud". The actual data is stored at Amazon. Here is where the pros and cons come in. On the pro side small companies and those starting out have a very large and nimble tools set to work with to accomplish there office goals and needs. Budgeting and growth are easily handled whereas traditionally this could be a show stopper. Suddenly items and issues that where expensive or impossible to have become easy to use and budgeted if not totally cheap. Cloud computing is best when everything is running smoothly; you have a high speed internet connection that never drops and your power is nice and steady! Therein lays the dark side! While nimble and flexible, cloud computing is very susceptible to real world issues of being hacked by competitors or damaged due to interruptions or network traffic. Legal issues of licensing and ownership of data have also been asked but not legally defined by case law yet. So there are many pit falls small businesses and home owners need to be aware of that simply have not been explored yet. This can have an abrupt destructive effect on small or startup businesses who traditionally do not weather business interruptions well. So in short Cloud computing can be the fast track for new business owners and families who don’t have a lot of storage space to get into business or down load movies, but you must remember that this fast track is also a mine field of unknown perils! As I like to say, Vigilance, reason and appropriate action!