Free + Cloud = Careful Planning

We marketers now have a literal landslide of free and often powerful widgets and tools we can utilize for everything from community building to campaign tracking and analysis. Most of which are deployed on the cloud [a.k.a. hosted on someone else's servers] and are 'by design' pre-integrated with big brother CMS, CRM, ERP, and Social applications - also on the cloud. Cloud means we generally don't have to invest in hardware. And pre-integrated means we generally don't have to invest in heavy-weight configuration challenges. Also cloud applications typically provide what can be a significant advantage, rapid deployment.

My concern? What does all this free stuff really cost. Security issues aside, what happens to all of our data and content should any given provider cease to exist [atleast as we know and love them]. After all, free is not sustainable. The brilliant developers of these tools have bills to pay too. Thus, if they don't figure out how to make a buck, eventually they will disappear.

When assessing cloud tools in general I suggest looking for solid back-up options *and* how/if breaking the chain of tools deployed will affect the overall structure we have in place. Tools built on open source platforms for example, provide us some measure of a lifeline required to rebuild or bridge if necessary. It may not be easy, but atleast it's conceivable. Second, those tools that make light[ish] work of maintaining a secondary/internal repository are a much safer bet.

With the aid of careful contingency planning, we may miss a beat or three if a cloud tool disappears [free or otherwise] but it shouldn't cause permanent arrhythmia.

PS. Many freeware providers include a donate option on their download page. If you are so inclined, sending them a few bucks in gratitude is a mighty neighbourly thing to do!