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Deleting "old" files is not always an "across the board" scenario, especially for companies that must adhere to strict HIPAA requirements. One of the previous companies I worked for was a healthcare company that definitely fell into this scenario. We had to maintain and protect customer PII data. However, the problem with uncontrolled data sprall or data growth was not actually with the PII data. Not only that, just taking snapshots of massive PII data, the actual storage requirements for such data is most often much smaller than most other data (of course, depends on how and in what format the PII data is stored.) Not surprisingly, since there are strict policies and procedures regarding to storage, backup, security, accessibility, and HIPAA compliance, the storage footprint for PII data is most often considerably smaller and more manageable than most other typical types of data. In fact, the storage problems most often are encountered with other data ranging from general office documents, project plans, PowerPoint slide decks and other graphics or multimedia files, software install bits, and of course, like the example I gave earlier, often-challenging storage management with source control systems for dev teams, such as SourceSafe, Team Foundation Server, and especially others such as PerfForce and ClearCase.

All these different file storage needs, compliance requirements, backup and recovery needs, all can be a storage mishmash if not managed well. This really underscores the importance of having hired IT talent that understands the needs of the business, its end users, business compliance, availability requirements, as well as the general access trends of the different types of data. Like you pointed out, it is much better for businesses to keep data under their own roof.

If no one in-house has an adequate understanding of the needs, requirements, and data availability, then clouds definitely will not help the situation. In fact, it will make it far worse. On the other hand, if internal engineers have a good grasp on the different types of data, storage footprint, etc., that a specific business typically uses, implements adequate file management policies and procedures for end users, then it is highly unlikely that when this scenario is combined with high-performance, highly-accessible, scalable, yet low cost storage SANs that are increasingly becoming available today, that clouds would be of any significant value anyway. This essentially means that regardless of the type of data a business maintains, it's storage needs, or how effective and efficient the data is managed (or not), the use of clouds will provide zero value. Clouds will actually be more costly, increase exposure risks, and experience significant performance and availability issues, which further decreases office productivity and increases operational costs. What is amazing to me is that there are some IT folks and business leaders that cannot get their head around these fundamental facts.

I think of cloud computing sort of as a "SaaS Gone Wild". There are some external products and services that work great for businesses under a SaaS model. However, when someone gets the bright idea to offer SaaS-based solutions for company IT infrastructures and data storage, it is just asking for severe, costly, and highly-unecessary trouble for ANY company with IT needs. Therefore, it really doesn't matter how large or small a company's IT needs are, or how effective (or ineffective) IT architects or systems engineers are managing the IT infrastructure and it's intellectual property, as clouds easily can and should be completely avoided.