It's been a gratifying week for my fellow nimbophobics. Our numbers are growing by leaps and bounds. Consider just four examples ...
- Apple MobileMe transition and iCloud: Those beautiful online albums of thousands of images and videos? Kiss them all good-bye. Your massive web site? Sayonara.
- A few weeks after being caught dissembling about their encryption keys, Dropbox accidentally removes all security for all accounts for four hours.
- Google is shuttering its hugely hyped Google Health Personal Health Record. Hope you weren't relying on those online medical records you entered.
- My longstanding and much appreciated Google Custom Search pages are, as of today, abruptly overwhelmed with copious top and side Google ads.
These stories range from appalling (Apple) to annoying (excess ads in custom search pages). The Google PHR fail would be the worst, but it's somewhat mitigated by the data exit options they provide and by the two year warning. Those options include CCR XML migration to Microsoft's HealthVault [1].
Friends don't let friends rely on the Cloud. Don't put anything in the Cloud unless you have a way to move your data to an alternative platform. That's as true for your business processes as it is for your family photos.
[1] Any health informatics students looking for a semester project or an easy publishable paper? Create a PHR in Google Health Records. Export as CCR XML. Import into Microsoft HealthVault. Write a paper on the data loss.
