I read an article the other day in CIO.com about Cloud Computing and a couple of things really stood out to me. Senior writer Stephanie Overby did a piece with Accenture CIO, Frank Modruson, on some of their Cloud experiences and they lessons they learned. He pointed out 5 different things but I thought 2 of them were particularly thought provoking.

The first was: the cloud can take you places you couldn’t go before. There is a ton of optimism in the cloud these days and rightfully so. While the possibilities in some cases may be unknown, they are limitless. Accenture was able to decommission their IT systems in 40 countries and use a custom software system all over the world. Implementing that in each of those countries would have been extremely difficult but the cloud made it all possible.

The next thing I found interesting was Modruson’s take on cloud security. Security has always been an area of interest among cloud consumers. After all, who doesn’t want their stuff to be safe? Modruson says however the perception that something under your control is inherently more secure is misguided. He then uses a simple reference to money to prove his point and it made me almost instantly think differently about cloud security. Is your money safer in a bank or under your mattress? Cloud providers are investing millions in security because they want their service to be just as secure as you. They don’t want to suffer a media black eye. As a cloud user it is important though that you test and monitor your stuff diligently.

To learn more about cloud security, register for this week’s IMF Web Forum on “Securing Cloud Infrastructure and Applications.” It will be led by members of Microsoft’s Internal IT Security and Compliance Team.