Cloud computing has been around for some time now, and a lot of persons have been using it for years without even knowing about it. Just think about services like Gmail and Hotmail. Both these take your information into the cloud, without you having to store anything on your personal computer. Of course you can sync the services to download to your Outlook/Thunderbird/mail client, but basically the services are hosted and maintained by a company - completely free of charge!

Obviously these services are not in it for some idealistic cause, and do make money on the traffic, but using these services raises a very interesting question. Should we really put all our trust in the cloud and let these companies manage all our email communications and personal information this way?

To get straight to the point; My answer is yes. Looking at it from a cost-benefit standpoint the services offer something you would have to pay for otherwise and are extremely well functioning. Just take Gmail. Google has perfected the service for years and as a user you get literally no spam at all, as their filters catch pretty much everything. For a comparison I receive somewhere between 5-10 spam mails daily in my personal email, so for a comparison this is pretty good.

The problem comes when the services stop working. We are starting to depend more and more on the cloud, mostly without even thinking about it or ‘planning’ to do so. On the personal level services include the above mentioned, but on a corporate level we are also seeing many companies use different tools such as Salesforce, Basecamp, Highrise, Google Aps etc. All these serve various functions, but equal for all is that they are hosted in the cloud, and companies don’t necessarily have all the information backed up locally (even though this is highly recommended, even in a digital world!). Merging data into the cloud takes a lot of trust and confidence that these services will remain intact for a long period of time. Nothing makes us think that we should worry about having Gmail around in a year, but we should consider the point.

Just think about the outages we have seen the past year in Gmail and other services. They have been few, but critical to companies using Google Aps to run their corporate email accounts. At the same time these services are completely free of charge, and we can’t really complain if we are not paying for it. That makes tools like these the ideal options for private users as well as start-ups, working on shoestring budgets.

So what’s important to remember?

1. Cloud computing and online services are extremely good value for money (especially when they’re free!), and as the companies use these to generate traffic and revenue, they’re well maintained and uptime is close to a 100%.
2. Services offer loads of functions designed to make your life easier (take Gmail as an example with functions that help you sort your email, and a great spam filter that helps you spend your time on other things)
3. DO remember to do backup of your stuff, and don’t leave your entire life floating in the cloud. As for emails this is done easily by using an email client on your computer, where you occasionally download your email and store it. This is important as we never know if the cloud services will be discontinued, and for most free services, the companies have no obligation whatsoever.

I love the cloud and I use it all the time, every single day. It’s just important to keep in mind that we are putting a lot of information out to third parties, and remember to keep our personal backups if something should occur!