The thing that a lot of people seem to forget in this debate is that there is room for all 3. On a personal level, I make extensive use of commercial software

The thing that a lot of people seem to forget in this debate is that there is room for all 3. On a personal level, I make extensive use of commercial software (especially MS SQL Server) for some things, wide use of open source software (FireFox and Python are first amoungst many) and some cloud software (gmail, google calandar come to mind). On the business side though, I would be hesitant to ever advise an employer or client to make use of cloud resources for a few reasons. One of them is the lock in as mentioned in the article. Another is the risk of loss of data that is outside the businesses control. Another is the fact that the cloud service could upgrade the software in a way we didn't like with very little recourse on our part. After all, there are times when you want to keep the older version. For instance, numerous businesses have declined to switch to Vista and I will not be leaving python 2.54 until some of the libraries I use finish their updating process. Of course, all of the concerns I mentioned can be addressed, but it would require substantial due diligence on the IT side to verify that the cloud computing company has adequate protections in place and then on legal's side to ensure that they are contractually enforceable.