Cloud Technology Overturns IT Assumptions

A lot of CIOs tell me they don't like the lack of transparency of cloud services. There's a reason they call it the cloud. What goes on inside there is, well, cloudy.

That doesn't dissuade Navarro. "I am not sure about all the details inside that makes the cloud tick," he says. "We get a report on a daily basis ... where we can see at any time and go historically back, I think three months or so, any intrusions or attempts of intrusions, which is phenomenal. We can see our backups. We can see reports on our vulnerability tests. We can see basically any information, anything that's eventually protecting our data."

Cloud vendors have to be very, very good at managing and applying all these fixes, or they'll be out of business in a real hurry.

Maybe, in a few years, this wheel will turn again and the pendulum will swing away from hosted applications. But I doubt it. Cloud technology just makes sense. Obviously, your mileage may vary. But as long as the cloud vendors say what they mean and mean what they say, the cloud will proliferate.