Bluelock

Over the last year, I have read a number of discussions about the advantages of cloud computing. While many of the discussions center on the ability to scale, manage costs, and the intrinsic disaster recovery aspects as the primary advantages of virtualization there are other benefits as well. 

One of the benefits often overlooked is the data portability and remote access.   Here are links to two articles with good overviews of the portability topic: 

• In January 2008 Benn Konsynski, a chaired professor of business administration for information systems and operations management at Emory University said:
  • One of the biggest advantages is that a user may no longer have to be tethered to a traditional computer to use an application, or have to buy a version that’s specifically configured for a phone, PDA [personal digital assistant] or other device. It’s likely that at some point any device that can access the Internet will be able to run a cloud-based application. Application services are available, independent of the user devices and network interfaces.
• In October of 2008, Brandon Wybenga argued the key advantage of cloud computing was not scalability, but portability.

As the discussion continues, how important is portability to your decision?