With the recent flurry of everything-as-a-service blog posts, it was good to read Frank Dzubeck’s pragmatic article on The Industry Standard outlining five issues that should be considered upfront by anyone pondering using cloud computing to run their apps. Frank list covers the basics of security, performance and financial ROI, but he adds management and governance which most folks fail to realize are at least as important.

I would add one more question to Frank’s list, though. Potential users should also ensure that service is available in multiple data centers and preferably from multiple providers as well. This makes it easier to build for business continuity and to provide a responsive rich user interface to wide spread audiences.