On 03/22/2013 03:07 PM, Richard Vickery wrote:

...and I think the term "most people" refers to the vast majority who are not lawyers nor accountants. These professionals might need their stuff saved on their own machines, or external drives. Of course, does a private cloud need to be on the internet?

The "private Cloud" could be the equivalent of one-day rented offices. We have a number of firms in the United States, who rent out professional-looking offices and conference rooms to small businesses who are basically running out of the owner's residence but want to meet clients in a setting that makes the client a little more comfortable. You can even hire someone, for 1 USD/day, to answer your telephone and pretend to be your dedicated secretary/receptionist. A shared or semi-dedicated private cloud would be an extension of this concept. Web hosting services already follow this model: shared server, semi-dedicated server, virtual private server, or fully dedicated server. You can envision private Cloud services offering similar tiers of service.

I imagine that the subscription fees would be stiff, though the traffic would probably not bear any more than the equivalent of buying a new minitower and laptop every three years.

This "private cloud" would be on the Internet, but use the technique known as Virtual Private Networking. In short, several levels of security that the public Internet normally does not see.

Still, someone could still crack into such a cluster, and I know some people who will never trust a Cloud, public or private, with their "stuff." This "stuff" would be of a frankly subversive nature--or so some government officials might regard it.

Temlakos