In The World We "Trust", I touched upon the importance of relationships in our lives and those that are built on trust are the strongest. I pondered upon the effects of social media on our relationships and how the increasing dependence on the cloud will put our trust to test.

A Cloud of Doubt was a result of more thought-time I put into how safe the cloud is in light of the recent news about Dropbox and Whrrl, and the doubt that their statements injected into my simple mind. It was a call to action for you and me to think about who we are entrusting with our data, and question how they are keeping it safe.

I am grateful for the tweets, the re-tweets, the comments and the conversations that I was able to generate, in my own small way, amongst my followers, my subscribers and and my friends. Thank you!

This is my wrap-up post of this theme until a time when it will resurrect again, I'm sure, in a nearby future.

The fundamental question that triggered my thoughts on this theme was this: Can we trust the cloud? The answer is three-fold.

1. Make the unknowns known.

When I say trust and you think security, then the answer is: I don't know. Security is and always will be a big unknown. This may be the reason why some of the providers of cloud-based services seem as though they are either not openly talking about it or they don't talk about it in-depth and often enough. Rackspace, Windstream and Amazon's EC2 are some of the prominent players in the market today and I must point our that Windsteam's openness to talk about this topic on their blog is admirable. I think providers of cloud computing services need to talk about security more, as it stands today, as it changes tomorrow and then some more. Make the unknowns known and help remove our assumptions and the speculations from the equation.

2. Failure paves the way to success.

When I say trust and you think reliability, then the answer is: Absolutely, Why not? Reliability, Availability and Flexibility are some of the benefits that I think the cloud is really about. The success of services like Evernote, Dropbox and Foursquare are examples of how we can rely on the cloud to make sure that our data is portable and available to us at all times. We should definitely be able to rely on service providers like Amazon to build the infrastructure that the cloud needs to make us more resourceful and productive. So what if Amazon screwed up last week and somewhat clouded our innocent minds. On our way to a reliable future, I think we can expect there to be some fumbles along they way. The way I see it, the incident at the very least would give Amazon a chance to strengthen their processes and improve their infrastructure. That's a win in my books for the cloud.

3. It's about collaboration.

When I say trust and you think privacy, then the answer is: Good point but you are just about 10 years too late on that argument. Actually, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin met in the summer of 1995 and they released the first version of Google in August 1996, I'd say your privacy was compromised. If the cloud is anything at all, it is not about being private. It is about collaboration and reaching out beyond borders and boundaries, in a way that enables us to engage with anyone anywhere, quickly and cost-effectively. In closing, it doesn't really matter whether we trust the cloud or not. The cloud is the future and there is no going back. What matters is whether we care enough to be aware of what the future holds, would we be able to leverage what the cloud has to offer, and who in the cloud will be able earn our trust. I'll leave it at that, for now.