I’ve read numerous articles about cloud computing over recent months, some promoting the advantages and other questioning the benefits. A story in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye last week, which was headlined: “To Cloud, or Not to Cloud”.

The author of the piece provided some interesting takes around different areas that companies should consider as they make a decision on whether to move into the cloud. The story was balanced, looking at the advantages and disadvantages of the cloud.

Although many of the points in both the positive and negative columns were valid, I have a couple of key takeaways that further confirm to me that cloud is the way to go:

It is my observation that businesses are ready to move more of their most sensitive information to the cloud. For that to happen - SaaS providers need to support strong security measures to protect the data. SaaS solves many problems for an IT manager, but at the same time introduces some issues of its own. I will focus on one major shortcoming that, if not addressed, will cripple the adoption of SaaS. Fortunately, that flaw can be fixed with some goodwill and foresight. I refer to widely adopted weak authentication mechanisms - customers are given only the good old email/password combination, except for online banking.