An interesting point arose the other day in resonding to a point raised by Rob Watson in commenting on my Blog “Dynamo or Dinosaur”. The issue had been raised about the danger of data being lost if an SaaS provider went down and I had responded that if the accountant is in the loop, they will have probably imported the data into their statutory accounts systems so all would not be lost.
It is an interesting point. Most, if not all, the discussion on Cloud Computing has been aimed at the end user who, actually, is spoilt for choice with the number of different offerings that now exist.
Scant attention has been paid to the accountant who, ultimately, is going to be making use of this data so that management or annual accounts can be prepared.
A number of SaaS systems have usable export links – Easycounting and now e-conomic for example, have direct exports into recognised final accounts packages. But those, of course, are firmly networked based. Old and new technology working hand in hand.
Will we ever see Cloud Computing replacing the established networks – or will that be one step too far?