WNS Global is addressing the security issue, according to Kapoor. "At WNS, our primary concern is the security of data. All customers are segregated first at the network level and then, using technologies such as Multi-stor, we make sure there is complete segregation at the storage level," he says. "As a result there is no part of the infrastructure that overlaps between customers."

So what will it take to make cloud storage viable for applications beyond e-mail, CRM and data protection? The answer is simple: Cheap bandwidth.

As tablets and smart phones become everyday business tools, new applications in many organizations will embrace browser-based HTTP application interfaces to primary storage. As more of these devices are deployed in business-critical applications served up over the Web, in a way, cloud storage automatically becomes primary storage, particularly if the storage is not maintained on the local device.

This is a good thing, until you run out of bandwidth. SSG-NOW is involved with a number of companies that are working at various levels within the TCP/IP infrastructure and it is our opinion that there is plenty of headroom in the existing and developing network infrastructure to handle the increased loads that the new generation of client devices will require.