I have been exploring the cloud myself as from a technological view it is actually a very cool idea. However, I don't like much of what I see as far as implementation on a business/economical/social level. The tech is great, the EULA and Terms of Use are bad, very, very very bad. I don't understand and so far nobody has come forward to explain why language such as "we reserve the right to change this agreement at anytime, in anyway, with out prior notification" is included in the terms of use or EULA of the vendors I have researched on my own. Some companies hide this in item number 16 others it is item 2. Some companies make you start the purchase process before letting you know that "oh by the way, we might turn around and sell your data to raise money or give it to the Chinese government if they ask us for it."
The truly funny sales reps are the people who have told me "Everyone has that in their contracts, it doesn't mean anything, and besides nobody has ever used the power it gives over the business relationship." So it hasn't been tested in court yet. Wonderful. If it is meaningless why is it included. Basically the cloud vendors have to cover their own back sides first. They have to have the power to change business models, add services, take services away, and sell assets to stay in business themselves. So you their customer are at best third on the list of things the cloud vendors actually care about (if you are lucky).
I see "the cloud" as being an educational or government backed information repository at best. Cloud vendors will probably never give up control of their own businesses and Cloud Service USERS will either have to suck in being second class users constantly worried about their data or actually lose valuable information from these cloud vendors in an accident or when the vendor goes out of business.
Another amusing answer is only store sensitive data on in house computers. I laugh out loud at that one as well. If I went to all of the trouble to setup an IT shop for sensitive data, what is preventing me from using it for other reasons???
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