A Cloudy Day

The main thing that has changed since I was last working in the private sector is the availability and utility of cloud services.  Every day I find more and more useful, mature services. The thing that has not changed is people. There is still a hesitancy to trust something that you can't touch or a person you can't look in the eye. I think this is the one cognitive leap that divides the current digital businesses from the nearly-digital businesses. Somewhere there is someone in a decision making capacity that just can't make that leap.

If you have ever seen a flock of sheep pile up because one sheep could not walk past a particular rock or bush... same dynamic. All the other sheep are going "I can't see anything... but maybe.... what do you think??"
The natural urge to caution comes out and all the sheep are reduced to the level of the most conservative sheep. Nothing wrong with that. That strategy has good strong survival instincts built in.

This brings us back to cloud services.  How do those conservative choices apply with cloud services?

Look at risk management.  Cloud services are a risk managers worst nightmare.  How do you quantify and mitigate the risk of a business that you rely on going bust and disappearing into the night with your data and potentially a critical element in your business?

Same way businesses have always played the trust game. Contracts.

Behind every cloud service is a person who can have "penalty clauses" applied to them.  But for that to happen, you need to be able to find them and their jurisdiction.  You need to be able to contract agents in that jurisdiction who can act on your behalf. This is a game that has been played out in different ways countless times over the past centuries with traders selling things to people in "foreign" lands.  It always comes down to a choice. Even though there is a "deal" ( read contract) in place. It's only useful as long as things are going well.  When the deal goes sour, to actually apply the penalty clauses, there usually has to be someone who will "honor" the terms of the contract voluntarily.  This usually means there has to be a business or owner or the estate/assets etc who will "do the right thing".  When that comes to a pile of digital records and digital assets and your ability to contact agents in foreign parts is limited by you being a small to medium enterprise without a litigation department. What do you do? Who can you call?

Some thing to think about when purchasing cloud services.