Apple hires...

If your company depends on IT, and you just upload everything to a giant web application platform provider, then where's your company? What's it made up of?

Ten laptops and an access point aren't a good basis for a business, because there's absolutely no barrier to staff disappearing with all the client contacts and history. The IT industry is shockingly poor at explaining how the available tools can be used to deal with this situation - small businesses generally run around turning off every security feature they encounter, because there's no time to waste on such nonsense - until the lead salesman leaves with all the business leads on his BlackBerry, ready to start his new business with.

One site we know of has half a million documents on its main file server - it fully understands the value of this resource, so it has three separate forms of backup. But the purpose of rule 3 is: if you burgled this company and went looking for its value, you couldn't immediately single out the machine it's on.

Just because computers make your intellectual property invisible, doesn't mean it's reduced in value. If you must use some external service provider, ensure that on-site versions of the material are kept, kept up to date, and kept on a backup system that can be fully restored without the involvement of a Cloud provider or ISP. And yes, this means you, Purchaser of Managed Exchange Email Services.