I hate to say I told you so. No I don’t – I actually enjoy it. What I don’t like is talking about bad news that cost people jobs and make businesses suffer needless losses. According to this account in NetworkWorld, customers of The Linkup have suffered enormous data loss and the company is shutting down. All of the commentary on the efficiencies of cloud computing and SaaS seldom talk about the inherent risk in surrendering your personal information or the lifeblood of your business (your data) to the watchful eyes of a company you can’t hold accountable.
The hosts are often much bigger than the individual clients making recourse difficult and nobody ever believes the EULA when it says “it’s not our fault if we loose all your stuff.” This doesn’t make the benefits of the cloud less compelling but it screams for better due diligence when selecting a vendor. Good news I suppose for EMC/Mozy as people run to ever bigger players for warm fuzzies.