Governments must never deploy or lease so-called 'clouds', which give a company an authority over citizenship. Governments should generally use software that they totally control and control both locally and independently from any company. Free software is a good fit which is not expensive as it can be maintained by many parties simultaneously.
Microsoft has given its cloud-computing-based Live@edu and its Office Web Apps to a Norwegian “learning management” software company called It’s Learning Inc., whose U.S. headquarters is run by a group of Boston-area technology executives.
“It is never private when it is proprietary, so this is another case of misuse of terminology, intended to confuse and to market based on misinformation.”In last week's high profile meeting, Steve Ballmer made it clearer that they want to own and control people's data too (also published in the Economic Times). Capgemini is helping Microsoft [1, 2] and so does their longtime booster Alexander Wolfe, who published promotional pieces in two places [1, 2] (Microsoft MVP Jason Hiner did something similar last week).
The spin to watch out for is named "private cloud" from Microsoft. It is never private when it is proprietary, so this is another case of misuse of terminology, intended to confuse and to market based on misinformation. Microsoft has the US army working with them [1, 2] and whether it's something to be proud of or not depends on one's idea of war (the secret services also get access to Microsoft-accumulated data). Surely enough, Microsoft's competition against rivals can sometimes be described as militant. ⬆
"Where are we on this Jihad?"