Web 2.0, that is:  Increasingly, individuals and businesses alike are “going to the web.”

In my case, a recent event convinced me that storing my e-mail, contacts, and allied content on a “local,” home office computer is dicey. 

Understand:  I had a comprehensive backup – and – installation discs.  However, for anyone who has tried to re-install MS-Office components, fix corrupt PST files, and so forth, knows what a pain it can be.  I even have a backup PST, but for whatever reason, Outlook insists on balking – I won’t belabor the details.

I somehow had the foresight to create duplicate contacts on my ISP’s Webmail system.  I’ll resurrect my message store later – I’m good for the moment; I run lean and mean anyway.  But this has all got me to thinking…

Web 2.0 makes it easy to share information and collaborate.  Social media style dialog enablements, paired – not just with access to apps and data – but with ability to contribute, change, modify, and enhance apps and content, makes for a very powerful arena.  An approved virtual community of contributors and consumers of content makes for a savvy population, who can leverage any and all readily available Web 2.0 assets on behalf of the enterprise, its goals, its business.

What’s nice too is that, with appropriate planning and vetting, you can create a secured environment for apps and data… leveraging your provider’s (or multiple providers’) strengths:  Your provider performs backups and recoveries, as specified in a Contract, as guaranteed in  detailed Agreements.  They also provide platforms, paired with virtually an unlimited amount of capacity.  Your budget is their only limit.  No one needs to run out of physical room in a wiring closet or computer room anymore.  You sleep soundly at night.

As companies and individuals offload more things to a virtual environment (relatively speaking), just be sure to thoroughly vet your providers.  Contracts and Agreements are one thing:  Perform exercises to verify that enablements and data are truly recoverable in the case of local events and losses (or theirs).  There is no substitute for empiricism.  (The application of observation, not theory, in determining something).

Stay safe out there.

NP:  Avalon Sunset, Van Morrison, original Mercury LP.