| Sumario: | Web-hosted “cloud computing” could result in users becoming locked in to a single provider's service if the lessons of open-source software are not duly considered. Prior to the rise of reliable open-source programming, corporate users of proprietary software were obliged to pay for a costly stream of license fees, updates, and technical support. Cloud computing will enable companies to reduce costs by availing of services hosted in remote server banks; however, it could also make moving the hosted data to another service provider more difficult for the company should it become dissatisfied with current services. Industry efforts to create standards could help to avoid such problems once cloud computing is better established, but in the meantime, users of the nascent service must remain wary of lock-in and instead favor providers that allow the moving of data between clouds.
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