This is not a criticism of the article, per se, but one pet peeve that I have is the tendency to contrast tape or disk with "the cloud" as technologies in general. If one is contrasting in-house versus external backup solutions (relative to the user or business) then fine, but that should be clearly stated. If one wants to be technical however what exactly do you think is "in" the cloud that holds that data? Yep, disk and (actually) even tape.
Spectra Logic has a great video called "The Value of Tape in the Cloud" that is worth considering:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FsaNFN8_QE. As they rightly point out "the cloud" is simply a model cast over different and heterogenous types of IT on the backend, and the "cloud" is really just a hypernym for its constituent technologies. So the cloud does not supplant those technologies but rather it collectively integrates and utilizes them, though from the perspective of the user the data management is being outsourced to an abstracted storage destination. "The cloud" is just a way of referring to one's interface to the underlying storage technology.
I know most people might not even care what is in the cloud, only that it is available for backing up their data to off-site, which is certainly a valid perspective. However when discussing "technologies" the cloud is not an independent solution detached from existing storage technologies. I just wanted to make that clarification.
