According to the European Network Information Security Agency, the biggest risk associated with cloud computing is provider lock-in. As yet, there are no industry standards or best practices established for cloud computing providers, which means should you go with a serious first-mover — like Salesforce.com, for example — it’s entirely possible your data could be trapped in a proprietary format that only Salesforce-affiliated applications can use.
This is not to single out Salesforce, which is going great guns in the cloud arena by providing great apps and great service. But no cloud computing provider has an incentive to help users leave the service. Even if you could get all your data out of the cloud (which is not a given), acquiring it in a format that is usable is in no way guaranteed. Backing up your data with a third-party provider (hint, hint) that stores it in a relatively neutral XML format is hardly the worst hedge against provider lock-in. Think about it.
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