(vaporware) cloud cuckoo land!

said it much better than I could have; might sound dramatic for people who don't grok the intricacies of the current security scenario, but then, did you predict the way the market would turn out like this today? I haven't heard any important decision-maker type person say "oh yeah I knew that, I saw that coming"!

from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/28/cloud_computing_means_storage_consolidation/comments/#c_351569 :

I think all that £1.8 trillion (and counting) lost by the World's financial institutions lived in the monetary equivalent of a cloud. The whole thing proved to be incredibly vulnerable to a "common mode" failure. That is there weren't lots of single, independent, resilient financial systems. There was one massive one connected by means that nobody understood.

The whole "cloud computing" and SOA idea has the same uncomfortable feeling. Which little common flaw, what single component might fail that trashes the whole thing. There's going to be a complx system of interdepencies, on security, on networks, on naming, on service, on versioning. What failure, benign or malicious, technical or commercial could bring the whole thing crashing down. What undetected security breach will mean that all our details end up in some gangster's hands. I don't think I want my personal or financial data held in this piece of doubly figuratively "vapourware", for what else is a cloud made of. The finance industry made a mess out of opaque and abstract services. This could be a way for the IT industry to go the same way.

So yes - for nice for consumer toys, for the little software luxuries and gadgets of computing, for stuff not emeshed in the working of the real economy than mash these things together. Just don't bet your life, or your finances on it. If you want guaranteed security, performance, robustness, accountability and reliability. Well that's a lot of trust to have - a systemic failure could bring down a country, not just a company.