iCloud has been introduced as a major feature of iOS5 systems. iCloud can be used to backup and restore Apple devices, upload emails, contacts, calendars and applications. This sounds awesome to Apple and consumer users, however, to enterprise IT Administrators, it can be a disaster.

Take a look at the Terms and Conditions of iCloud which is normally ignored. This means never use iCloud to backup your sensitive and important documents or content.

Apple is unable to guarantee that any content you may store or access through the service will not be subject to inadvertent damage, corruption, loss or removal. Apple can also not be held responsible should damage, corruption, loss or removal of content occur. 

Also storing corporate data on iCloud can be a serious violator of corporate compliance. As in SAP, storing SAP data on iCloud would equate to storing it ‘outside of SAP’, which is strictly not allowed. Therefore, iCloud and possibly iOS5 are something which needs to undertake deep evaluation before they are corporate wide deployed.

Sybase Afaria provides a solution to disable certain build-in or user-installed application on mobile devices. For example, on corporate devices youtube and icloud can be disabled for security and compliance reasons. It is also meaningful to stop using dropbox or box.net services on coporate devices. (both are banned by Great Firewall of China, no more actions to take). Among these cloud storage services, icloud is the most integrated and transparent to unawared consumers. That is the dangerous point because consumer loses control of their privacy and is open to all kinds of phishing scams.