More on Cloud Computing for Law Firms

Cloud computing has been in my mind lately. Either there are more conversations going on or I am just noticing them more. I ran across this post by Maggie Fox of Social Media Group: You store your money in the cloud - why not your data?

Maggie writes:

"You already store your money in the cloud. Your employer does not give you a bag of gold ingots on payday. They electronically transfer funds to a third party. Most of us are so comfortable with this that we don’t even think about it. . ."

So why should we so uncomfortable with keeping our documents and enterprise information in the cloud.  Maggie points out that there needs a more robust competitive environment for providers and government regulations need to be in place to make it viable.  The recent mistake on Google Chrome's Terms of Service [See: Making Terms of Service Clearer from the Official Google Blog.] One sided terms of service with no liability for a loss of data will not be acceptable for a business to embrace cloud computing.

The challenge will be determining the value of lost data. If the bank looses your $100 deposit, they owe you a $100. If the cloud computing provider loses 100GB data, how much is that data worth?

Of course the enterprise is just as capable of wiping out its own data on sources inside firewall.

Yesterday, I posted on knowledge management in the cloud through Practical Law: Knowledge Management and Practical Law Company. Sunday, I posted about the Xconomy cloud computing conference. Both of which came from my Cloud Computing and Law Firms post last week.