To answer the question: some potential cloud users will have problems with governance (compliance) issues, and the cloud may not be suitable for them. An obvious example would be some government authorities. Organisations like the military will not want to use cloud computing services for many applications, because it requires trusting a third party and the connection to that third party. However, for many people data will be *more* secure, because it will be backed up more effectively, e.g. through replication at multiple sites or through distributed storage where all of the data is not stored at any one site, and because servers may be administered better. Moving to the cloud for many organisations will be equivalent to outsourcing IT, so if you have poor quality local expertise then you can expect an improvement in your IT administration.
Also, to add an opinion on cloud: so many people have disregarded cloud as a 'buzzword' or fad. I believe that they are wrong to do so. Recently I visited a cloud hosting provider that was growing its turnover by more than 100% a year - in the middle of an economic downturn - and they really are focused on the very early stages of cloud adoption (e.g. outsourcing an Exchange server). The potential for savings is huge, particularly for business that are starting up and are need scalability. One of the big advantages of cloud computing is that you free your company of capital investment in IT infrastructure, and you can relate your running costs to your operating income.
For concrete examples, Cloud is a catch-all word that includes:
- Hosting Exchange servers
- Providing thin-client services to offices or call centres.
- Providing CRM management over a web or thin client interface.
- Scalable web frameworks such as Google's App Engine.
- Providing scalable resources such as servers booting an image provided by the client.
Of course there are issues with Cloud Computing, and not everyone will adopt it to the extent that some enthusiasts suggest. There may well be a backlash after moving some services over and finding out that latency is too poor, or that certain providers are not sufficiently well-trained to do the job. But Cloud is here to stay, I am convinced of that, and it is a trend that will dominate the computing landscape for the next decade at least.
RS