Mac users generally regard themselves as tech consumers who just ‘get it’ in terms of simplicity, innovation and a clean user interface. They view PC users as laggards in the tech scene that strangely enjoy clunky software and second-rate hardware.

Does this comparison seem familiar? This is the exact debate going on between Microsoft Office and Google Apps. Those that use Office are seen as being inefficient, laggards, and hesitant towards innovation.

Google Apps users are innovators, lovers of new technology, and they ‘get it’ in terms of a simple user interface that can increase productivity.

Thus, Google Apps users are the new Mac loyalists, a point ZDNet blogger Sam Diaz made just this week. This is not to spark a debate between Mac vs. PC or Google vs. Microsoft, but to simply demonstrate a correlation between the public perception of innovation vs. legacy products.

We’ve talked to many PC users who switched to a Mac for what they would describe as a superior computing experience. Once they switch, they admit to themselves that for them the Mac just makes sense.

Google is not (yet) trying to push mainstream consumers and large corporations to get Apps, just as Apple does not pursue mass adoption of the Mac. They have the understanding that these people just don’t ‘get it’ and that chasing that market share is likely more trouble (and less profitable) than it’s worth. For now, it seems Google and Apple understand that the loyalists and early adopters will appreciate the UI and productivity capabilities and others will follow afterwards.

Will Google Apps ever become mainstream? Probably not. The same goes for Macs. But that doesn’t mean that Google and Apple can’t succeed.

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Cloud computing is a very broad term encompasses anything from Facebook to Twitter to Google Apps to Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3). When considering cloud computing  it’s important to decide exactly what kind of cloud you’re talking about.

At the most basic level, cloud computing makes applications, software and other services available to consumers on demand via the web. On a more technical level, the cloud is divided into three categories: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Each “aaS” (careful how you pronounce that) is very different so you need to understand which is right for you and your business.

Is SaaS right for you?

A SaaS system provides network-based access and management of software in a centralized location that can be accessed remotely via the web. It replaces the applications that run on the end-user’s desktop. SaaS allows for frequent integration into a larger network of communication software. This is a one-to-many model that helps your business focus on your competitive advantage rather than infrastructure.

Flexibility and scalability are two main benefits, however SaaS is criticized for its lack of personal control (these systems are centrally controlled), the need to alter business processes to fit the system, and security issues.

Example: Google Apps

Is PaaS right for you?

PaaS allows companies to rent hardware and software to build applications, rather than owning, running and developing on an internal IT infrastructure. You get severs, server operating systems and server maintenance all rolled into one bill — but it’s up to you to run and serve applications and data off those servers. This allows a business to support the entire life cycle of creating and delivering web applications and services right on the web.

PaaS features include application design and development, testing, deployment, hosting, collaboration and more. PaaS facilitates the customization of existing SaaS applications. An ideal PaaS system should provide all service options in an integrated environment.

Example: force.com, a subset of salesforce.com

Is IaaS right for you?

IaaS is the base level of the cloud computing stack. Essentially IaaS serves as a foundation for PaaS and SaaS in terms of execution. The whole cloud infrastructure (i.e. servers, routers, hardware, firewall, storage, etc.) is provided by an IaaS vendor. You get the hardware but not the software; you can run any operating system on your servers and set up the development or production environment as you please, but you never have to pay directly for any hardware. This provides you with a place to host and execute your own cloud services. If you’re looking to self-host your company’s data, you will need to look into an infrastructure provider to do this.

Example: Amazon’s EC2

If you need an online network to enhance collaboration, you are looking for SaaS. If you need a system to support the entire lifecycle of your web application then you need PaaS. If you are looking for a virtual place to host and manage your data then you need IaaS.

Before implementing a cloud strategy, you must identify your needs and then figure out which service can provide them for you. You only pay for what is actually used on all these services which is a great cost-saving option for every business.

After deploying your “aaS” don’t forget you then need to have a backup plan in the case for any point of failure, accidental deletion, human error, hack, or glitch in your system.

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But are you prepared to defend that brand, especially when your critics are attacking you using the same social media tools you’ve come to embrace?

Maybe this has happened to you, maybe not; but that does not mean it won’t. For all the personal consequences of online criticism, the repercussions for a small business can be devastating. You’re natural instinct will be to counter-attack, to meet your critics head-on. In some cases this is the right response, in most cases it will only aggravate the situation — and cost your more influence (and money) in the long run.

That’s why Backupify strongly supports implementing a social media policy for your small (or large) business. Operating without a social media policy is like driving without a seatbelt; eventually it will cost you, and the consequences could be dire.

Bear in mind that an effective social media policy should not shut down social media activity in your company, but rather encourage it. This policy should also protect your business and employees from getting in trouble online with the law if confidential information is leaked, a subpoena is issued, or an eDiscovery request comes about.

Since social media for corporate marketing is fairly new, most companies fail to think about a social media policy until it is too late. If someone is planning on targeting your company and you do not have a policy in place, you will find yourself very unprepared and taken off guard.

Before you know it, the bad news will hit the headlines.

Did you know that blogs and blog comments tend to rank high in Google search results? If you are verbally attacked on a blog post, you can almost guarantee that it will show up on the first page of results for your company which can permanently damaging your company’s reputation.

If you wait too long to respond, that looks bad. If you respond poorly, that can only escalate the issue. However, if you have a social media policy in place, you can prepare for these events and respond in a timely and appropriate manner.

Here are three ways to respond to a negative attack online:

1. Acknowledge the comment and then switch to a positive aspect of your company. If they attack one aspect of your company, respond to that and then move onto an example of how you are helping clients or doing good for the community. You can also ask to handle this issue privately with the person so as to appear professional while not causing a ruckus.

2. Delete a comment. If someone posts a really rude or innapropriate comment (such as using slander, swear words, or derogatory comments) you can tell readers that the comment has been deleted, as it violates your company’s policy (and perhaps link to or quote the policy statement).

3. Ignore the comment. This option can be a risky one. On one hand, staying silent may allow the issue to settle down quicker since you are not firing back, but silence can also make your company look guilty and weak. Anyone who knows a bit about public relations knows that in most situations, silence is not the best answer.

Having a social media policy in place will help you to:

1. Respond appropriately to particular attacks

2. Have the right messaging at hand

3. Know who to hand certain queries or comments to and who is responsible for particular issues

4. Give strict guidelines of what to do and not to do

5. Outline what can be said about the company online

6. Disseminate personal social media usage rights while at work

7. Explain the disclaimer policy required by employees when discussing the company online to others

Always keep in mind that you have an audience. If you send out a negative tweet, rant about a competitor on your blog, or leave a nasty response to a Facebook post, it will be seen. Your employees must remain professional and calm in all situations in order to appropriately mediate the situation quickly. Having a social media policy in place can ensure this.

When developing your company’s social media policy, understand that there should be zero tolerance for all negative and derogatory comments from employees online. This also needs to be balanced with ways to encourage people to act proactively and positively online to engage with customers and leads.

You need to always have a social media policy and backup plan in place to prepare for any type of online activity that may occur, good or bad.

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For those that haven’t heard of it, Diaspora is the opensource alternative to Facebook. It will launch Sept. 15. The two major points of differentiation between Diaspora and Facebook are 1) Diaspora gives you more intuitive and effective control of your data privacy settings and 2) Diaspora is self-hosted, so you ultimately control all your own data.

According to the blogosphere, these two points are precisely what the public is crying for and the exact recipe necessary to finally break Facebook’s nefarious deathgrip on social networking. This, alas, is the social media/tech-blog echo chamber once again confusing its own desires with what the general public wants. This same crowd reacts with shock and indignation when Scott Pilgrim fails to out-earn The Expendables when any objective observer would have predicted brain-dead ’80s-pastiche explosions would appeal to a wider audience than video game hipster surrealism. By the same token, what the hard core social media crowd wants out of a social networking service has very little in common with what the average user wants out of a social network.

First, there simply is no competing — at least in the short term — with Facebook’s 500 million users. As written previously, Facebook has become too big to fail. Everyone is on Facebook, so everyone wants to be on Facebook. Perhaps more accurately, Facebook is AOL 2.0 — a massive walled garden that makes the internet simpler and safer for the average user. Facebook may be doomed to AOL’s same fate once the walls of that garden become too closed in but, lest we forget, AOL is still around. Diaspora will fail to kill Facebook simply because Facebook can’t die, even after it has faded to zombie-like pointlessness.

Second, I’m not convinced the average user gives a damn about privacy. Facebook’s entire history has been one long strong of privacy abuses, yet their membership grows every year. Even if the public really is more privacy sensitive than their behavior suggests, Facebook has achieved the necessary critical mass that creates a dominant social network.  Again, everyone is on Facebook, so everyone wants to be on Facebook. Diaspora will face a huge uphill climb to replace that giant, central value proposition of Facebook.

Third, the opportunity to host my own social networking server is one that appeals only to the smallest fraction of the social networking marketplace. Not only does this present a technical challenge that average user wouldn’t dream of tackling, but it also effectively negates Diaspora’s “free” pricetag when I have to pay for hosting space. Making a product that’s more technically challenging and more expensive than Facebook is not a recipe for mainstream success. Diaspora claims they’ll offer a non-hosted version later in the product roadmap, but such promises are often made and seldom kept when it comes to opensource projects.

Thus, I predict Diaspora will both fail to kill Facebook and fail overall. Despite this, I’m glad Diaspora is here. First, the project will serve as a useful gauge of the true public demand for a privacy-centric social network (though that term itself seems an oxymoron). Second, the technical hurdles that Diapsora seeks to overcome — namely mass contact and data migration from Facebook, Twitter and Flickr — will help every startup and product seeking to unlock and decentralize social networking data (Backupify included).

Diaspora is an important step in the long process of wresting control of user social data away from Facebook and its ilk. But for the time being, Facebook is here to stay.

Hope you’ve got a backup plan.

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Right now you’re probably sitting at your desk with Gmail open, a Google Doc up, and checking your Google Talk account periodically. Imagine in five minutes your Google account gets maliciously hacked and you lose everything. Your initial reaction: shock! Next, you worry about what happened to your data. Unfortunately, it’s probably gone.

While at first glance this may seem like a far fetched scenario, it really isn’t anymore. I don’t think anyone can put their finger on a particular number of how many hackers are out there, but to give you an idea, there are hundreds upon thousands that each specialize in email, social media, router, software, hardware and enterprise hacking. While some hackers are ethical and moral, many more are illegal.

After your state of shock clears, you will probably find yourself in deep regret that you didn’t plan ahead for any single point of failure that would lead to data loss.

A backup plan is the first step, and a recovery plan is the second.

You may be holding onto the long-standing assumption that backup and recovery solutions are very expensive. Traditionally, it was only large enterprises that dealt with backup systems and they were clunky sets of tapes and software devices that took time and a heavy outlay of money to create.

Now, most of this can be done online very quickly and at a low cost. Online backup and recovery systems run off of virtual servers so no physical maintenance is needed. It is all automated and in the cloud which has, essentially, an unlimited capacity for storage. This makes back ups quick and efficient to do and they can run quietly in the background while you continue your work.

Since cloud services are moving towards being a commodity, their costs are consequently lowering for the benefit of the consumer so you need not worry about high costs anymore.

Much of our personal and business-related data is held in the cloud, from Google to Facebook to Basecamp, etc. Since all this data is held in the cloud, it needs to be backed up in the cloud and/or locally.

At first thought, you may not care about needing to recover any Facebook data that you might lose. However, what happens if you choose to leave Facebook one day and realize you want to have a saved copy of some status updates you made, articles you shared, and pictures you were tagged in? There is no other realistic way (besides manually copying and pasting or saving the data to your computer which could take hours) to save this data without a backup.

Next, imagine that one day Twitter goes down for a full 24 hours. You might have sent a reminder tweet to someone about meeting up the next day but forgot where you planned to meet. Or, you may have tweeted about an event you were planning to go to but forgot where it was. How else will you find that?

While you may think these are minute issues to deal with and they probably will not happen, chances are they will. If you are on Twitter, you have seen the frequent instances of the Twitter fail whale going up and tweet counts diminishing randomly. If you have been following Facebook security news you will remember how many people are planning to leave (you may remember Quit Facebook day) or don’t entrust their data to Facebook anymore. We found that Gmail has a 95% uptime guarantee, but ideal SaaS providers should have a 99%+ uptime. This means that 5% of the time, users lose access to Gmail. This can occur at critical times that are most inconvenient to you.

What plan do you have in place to restore this data or at least access it while it is down on the server? Although you may not be a business user who stores mission-critical data on the cloud to keep a business running, realize that you still do entrust the cloud to some very important pieces of communication and data.

Whether you choose Backupify or not, it is more important than ever to consider a backup and recovery solution for your data.

Facebook Places lets you check into a location, establishing whether or not you attended an event or ever visited a specific business or residence. Facebook Places also lets your friends tag you into a location. Thus, you need not even acknowledge that you were at a company party or corporate retreat — your colleagues can confirm your presence for you (whether you like it or not). And, just as your friends can tag you into Facebook photos you’d rather remained unpublished and anonymous, Facebook Places can “put you at the scene” as they say on television crime dramas, associating you with places and events you would just assume stay private.

It’s the latter issue that is the most troubling. Location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla have allowed for the social media tracking of your physical presence for some time. But the user was always in control; you chose what was tracked and what was left unrecorded. Facebook Places gives your friends control of your location record, which both increases the amount of data available about you and decreases the level of control you have over that data.

The admissibility of Facebook Places data is yet to be determined and — as is often the case in civil litigation — will likely be up to the discretion of the presiding judge. Yet the power of Facebook Places to affect your legal standing in a lawsuit or criminal trial is only the beginning of the issues presented by Facebook’s new functionality.

Facebook Places now offer a whole new set of potential datapoints that you’ll have to turn over to your lawyers and copy to your opponent’s legal team. Facebook Places just ratcheted up the cost of eDiscovery and it did so by making Facebook data substantially more interesting to opposing parties.

Put simply: If Facebook Places always knows where you are, a cop or lawyer will eventually want that information, too. You’ll be expected to turn over that data at your own expense. Even if it isn’t relevant. Even if it’s inadmissible. The more scattered and disorganized that data, the more expensive eDiscovery compliance will become.

Hope you’ve got a backup plan.

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This type of security risk extends way beyond Facebook. In fact, you are your own biggest security risk on any website you surf. Between Gmail, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, etc., it may be you that is not careful enough with your data, not the web servers.

Kroll Ontrack, a leading provider of information management, data recovery, and legal technology products and services found that, “40 percent of home, business, government and channel users of information technology believe human error is the leading cause of data loss, up from 11 percent in 2005.”

While hardware malfunctions, server outages and natural disasters still attribute to data loss, human error tops them all.

“While technology and technology aptitude continue to improve year over year, the reality is that hardware failures, as well as human errors, continue to be factors,” said Todd Johnson, vice president of Ontrack Data Recovery operations.

Although this is the current statistic, it doesn’t have to be the norm.

The main reason why human error contributes to most data loss is a lack of security and technology education. With an abundance new technologies being introduced on a regular basis, it becomes difficult for the average person to keep up. Unfortunately, most don’t take into consideration a security breach until it is too late.

Data loss issues are not a matter of if, but when.

The ‘when’ part can be solved by furthering education on the importance of data security and instances of when data loss can occur. It is more important than ever for businesses to take proactive measures to ensure that the employees’ operating storage systems have up-to-date training, working redundancies and a continuity plan in case of a loss.

While it is important to have a backup, recovery and continuity plan in place, don’t you want to protect yourself before you should ever need to implement these?

Talk to your employer about ways to further protect company data from any single point of failure. Whether it involves education, training or improved systems, preparing for company-wide data loss now is a smart decision.

Don’t expect a data loss to occur, do something to prevent it.

While each of you may have your particular needs specific to your business or goals, there are ten overall questions you should be asking a SaaS vendor before signing your data over to them.

1. Security

Security is by far the largest concern companies have regarding the cloud. Many businesses drop the idea of moving to the cloud as fast as they hear about it once they start worrying about security.

The real question people should ask is “what type of security infrastructure is in place to secure my data on your cloud servers?”

2. Data liberation

Although stored by your SaaS provider, your data must ultimately be owned by you. Last week, we wrote of the importance of data portability and why every website should have a liberation policy. Google’s Data Liberation Front is one of the first companies to actually implement this; they allow users to easily get their data in and out of their servers at any time.

We support this feature and hope that soon most services will have this policy as well. It only makes sense today for users to control their own data regardless of where it is stored. Why should you be restricted from taking out your pictures from Facebook, tweets from customers on Twitter, videos on YouTube, etc.? It is your data, you should have control of it.

The main objective of data liberation to always have control of your data in case you need to restore or recover it. If you ever choose to leave a given service,  you will need to be able to take your data with you. This is where a backup plan comes into play.

3. Availability of data

When considering moving to a service like Google Apps, take into consideration the system’s uptime, downtime, protection from disasters, SLA terms and ramifications etc. You must ensure that if you are entrusting your data to a third party provider, they are giving you quality service that is available, ideally, 24/7. We found that Gmail has about a 95% uptime which is fairly good, just hope you’re not the 5% when trying to access a critical email. The best SaaS providers will have 99%+ uptime.

4. Support

If anything ever goes wrong, you’ll want to know how to contact support, when it is available and if there is a self-help feature. A good SaaS provider will have a flexible support schedule, highly qualified staff, comprehensive knowledge base, documentation so you can help yourself, and the ability to handle an unlimited amount of tickets to ensure your questions will be answered.

5. Enhancements

Although cloud services are innovative, you need to know that your SaaS provider is allowing you access to their latest improvements and features to ensure you are using the most up-to-date cloud capabilities. These improvements should be very easy to digest by any user and provide no disruption to the service when they are deployed. If a cloud provider doesn’t stress innovation and are content with the status quo, they are probably not a good choice for you.

You will want to find out how often new services are released and how closely customer feedback plays into new features. This will determine if they care for your input and respond well to customers.

If you have been following Backupify for awhile, you’ll know that we take customer feedback very seriously and respond to every request.

6. Integration

While you may be moving certain services to the cloud, such as Gmail and documents, you may still need them to work in conjunction with your existing servers and hardware. For instance, if you use a CRM tool in-house and need it to integrate with documents and emails, ensure the SaaS provider can accommodate for this.

You’ll want to avoid a vendor who has to create custom code for you to achieve this, and for a premium price. Ideally, you’ll want to look for a SaaS solution that uses open standard based APIs to link to your on-site systems. This is the most cost-effective and sensible solution.

7. Usability

While some cloud providers may still be a bit clunky and complex as they are still new and created by engineers and techies that live by high tech terms, an ideal SaaS provider will make the user experience as simple and pleasant as possible. It is hard to determine if a service is truly easy to use since most boast that they are. To avoid choosing a complex system, get a free trial and see how you feel using it for a week or two. If you can navigate it well and integrate it into your existing system and workflow, then it is probably the right choice for you. You will ideally want a user experience similar to Google: simple, and easy to understand with little to no support ever needed.

8. Contracts

You don’t want to be locked into a year-long contract with a cloud server in which you are still unsure. See if they have a month to month plan that you can use to try out and use only as you need. The main purpose of cloud computing is to use only what you need, so don’t waste money on a service that you don’t need to use for a whole year (unless it’s relatively inexpensive and potentially very useful in the long run). It is also important to be able to cancel your contract at any time if you are unhappy or deem it unnecessary.

9. Infrastructure

While this may not be as easy to find out, try to find out if the SaaS provider’s infrastructure can easily scale to your needs. For example, if you initially want to host 10 employees on a given server and plan to roll out the system to your remaining 1,000 employees in the next year, ensure the system can handle such a load when needed.

Since many cloud providers benefit from economies of scale, ask if they give bulk discounts for high volumes of users and/or data.

10. References

Nothing is more reassuring than reading what existing or past users thought of the service. You should search for the company on Twitter to check out the buzz, visit them on Facebook and read testimonials and case studies on their website (if they have any). The more validation that a service has in the marketplace, the more reassurance you will have that it is reliable and satisfactory.

By asking all the right questions and being prepared while evaluating a SaaS vendor, you will significantly increase your chance of satisfaction and success with them. If you sign into a big contract and are unaware of all the options, you may find yourself lost and unsatisfied at the end of the day. Make the most of your investment by asking all these questions plus additional company or mission-specific concerns you may have.

Whichever service you choose to use, make sure to have a backup plan. (Most providers aren’t at 99% uptime yet).

I’ll say this for McAfee — they know how to spin a press release. Even on the day they were bought by Intel for $7.7 billion, much of their online coverage centered around McAfee’s announcement that Cameron Diaz is the most dangerous web celebrity. This tells you everything you need to know about online security.

The public is stupid for celebrities. And that stupidity is why McAfee is in business.

The Intel deal for McAfee is epic. It shows the world’s largest chipmaker is willing to overspend by 60 percent to be more than just a chip company. It will have serious repercussions, both within and without of the tech sector.

And the Cameron Diaz press release will beat that story every time.

Cameron Diaz isn’t actually a threat to web security, her name is just a common enough search term that malware purveyors use it as social engineering bait. Security companies create these kinds of linkbait releases all the time. But this release reinforces the notion that the average schlub with click on even the sketchiest link if it holds the promise of seeing a hottie actress in a bikini.

McAfee knows this. This kind of public gullibility is why McAfee might be worth almost $7.7 billion. It’s also why McAfee was able to step on its own story about being bought for $7.7 billion — the public is stupid for celebrities. Common sense doesn’t enter into the equation.

Think about that the next time you decide you don’t need to protect your data from user error. How certain are you that someone with access to your system isn’t going to click a link to see a hottie actress in a bikini — consequences be damned? McAfee just earned the better part of $8 billion taking the other side of that bet.

Hope you’ve got a backup plan.

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We previously wrote about eDiscovery and subpoenas on social media data, cautioning you to be forewarned of the impact they can have on your business in terms of both money and time.

If you have a court case going on about online fraud, an eDiscovery on the company’s email system and Yahoo! finances may be issued.

Got a highly sensitive document on Google Docs containing fraudulent plans laid out? You will be asked to reveal the document in court as evidence.

If your company has already faced an eDiscovery request, then you will know that it is quite the costly endeavor. You may be aware that during a legal case, suits are settled usually based on the costs of fighting versus the costs of a payoff. In the case of eDiscovery, the costs are unexpectedly high and unwanted, forcing many to settle before the case can even begin.

A sexual harassment case against UBS was one of the most significant electronic discovery cases in history. It ended after seven district court decisions and a $29.2 million jury verdict for the plaintiff. The cost to discover all emails involved in this case was much more than any could have predicted. UBS produced 100 emails and claimed that was the entirety of the communications, but later it was found that they failed to search their backup files. UBS incurred 75% of the cost to locate these backup files. This was likely the largest jury verdict in history for a single-plaintiff employment discrimination case.

Many lawyers have a hard time justifying to their clients why the cost is so high to find these documents and files. The high cost lies in going through backup files, as in the UBS case, and sometimes entire system networks as well. The more complicated the case and the more data needed to prove one side or another, the higher the cost will rise.

If litigants don’t understand or expect the expense of eDiscovery, it can affect their whole legal strategy. During an eDiscovery suit, many find themselves saying, “I would have settled if I’d known ediscovery was this expensive” or “I HAVE to settle because I can’t afford the cost of eDiscovery”.

Finding a way to centralize a company’s online data to make archiving and searching quick and easy is key to lowering these extreme costs.

This is easier said than done, unfortunately.

For many companies, searching through thousands of emails can be a nightmare and can discourage them from even going forward with this process. With several, if not thousands, of employees at any given company who each have their own email account with different folders, this process can be grueling. An IT architect may have to spend hours upon hours to dig into each account and folder to discover one particular email needed for a case.

Businesses today simply don’t have the time nor money to afford to do this. What they really need is one central repository where all online data is stored.

Backupify’s backup archives stores all type of social and enterprise online data in chronological order to make this process easier. Whether an email was tucked away in a folder or put in the trash (whether accidentally or not) the data is all laid out in a clear and easy format.

If it isn’t Backupify, it should be somebody doing a centralized backup of EVERYTHING, social media included. It’s all eligible for subpoena. Don’t let the cost of eDiscovery force you to give up a legal fight.