Re: Re: I would definitely jump on the cloud bandwagon
A business with a self-hosted solution (of whatever kind) already carries 100% of the risks of a data/security breach, and I my experience has been that most small businesses are not very security conscious. The large providers need to be, or they risk running out of business. Though centralization leads to more attractive targets, it also makes security issues easier to fix.
The issue with moving data from one side to the other, or of losing access to data if a provider goes broke, is, as you pointed out, a very real one. On average, however, small businesses have a larger probability of going broke than the providers they are relying on. I would also think that the risks of data loss would be similar to the risk of having a hard-disk failure: if it happens, I better have some sort of backup somewhere else; otherwise I'm bound to suffer.
Finally, the risk of a cloud service failing in its first years is the same as that of any other company. That is where conscious choice comes in. If I could get a cloud server with the same specs from my neighborhood provider or from Amazon, then I should weigh the risks of each one: who is most likely to go under? Who offers the best guarantees? As I said, making a choice about cloud providers is no different from making a choice between any kind of IT provider.
Contributr 
