One ex-colleague points to a CIO Magazine article about another – Paul Cheesbrough’s decision to migrate users at the Daily Telegraph from MS Office to Google Apps.
It’s an interesting choice, one I’ve pushed people to think about, and I can identify with the collaboration benefits that Paul has identified. But will it suit all of his users?
The key thing to remember about cloud apps is that you don’t control the storage of your data, and you often don’t control the circumstances in which it gets released.
From conversations I’ve had with other people in the newspaper industry, I would imagine that by the nature of newspapers some of their staff will be in parts of the world where their activities will be unpopular, and where some of those documents or emails could get them into the way of all sorts of harm.
So how robustly would the provider (in this case Google) resist a law suit from the people who want to know what a paper has on them? Especially if that’s a government or a multi-national with deep pockets?
