The following was written by Chuck Brown of Fiberlink in response to "E-mail 'biggest' security risk, Microsoft says" published November 10, 2009, on Goverment Computer News.

 In response to this post from David Linthicum's blog at www.InfoWorld.com.  

There has been much written already about the issues and events that led to the massive service outage and data loss that occurred at the Danger/Microsoft datacenter that hosted the T-Mobile Sidekick services:

From David Lingenfelter, Fiberlink.

Tomorrow, the White House CIO, Vivek Kundra, is going to announce his plans for cloud computing.   It’s anticipated that this first phase he will announce at a press conference in California will give government agencies a central place to store and use simple collaboration tools.  Kundra, who has acknowledged cloud computing’s place in the government’s IT tool box, agrees with many (including me) that it will cut costs. 

Right now we’re in the slow part of the summer – into the middle of August when more people are on vacation than in the office.  A time when most of Europe is on holiday.  When most people rely on their handhelds and laptops to answer emails from the beach and finish reports on airplanes.

By Robert Daigneault, Fiberlink.

The cloud can be a confusing place for most people, even those in IT.  The “what” is still being defined even as people are starting to use it.   We’ve talking about cloud computing plenty of times on this blog in the past, but let me put my definition out there simply: Cloud computing is the use of servers outside the LAN to host information and resources which can be accessed from anyplace on the Internet.  In our business, we use cloud computing to help businesses better serve and secure their mobile workers (which is pretty much all of them these days) by putting their management and monitoring of their mobile devices in the cloud where their mobile workers live.

Every year, like Christmas to some, companies push out their new corporate PC image. It’s chock full of updates – security patches, an Office upgrade, updates to other software, perhaps even a totally new project management module.  To keep from overextending people’s joy in December, this event is often times done in the summer time when business is slower.

The other day, I was locked in conversation with a man who has been a long-time customer.  He’s a particularly bright individual and his company is extraordinarily well-respected as an authority on many subjects.  Normally, I look forward to any exchange of ideas with him, but on this occasion, I found him particularly perplexing.