One of the advantages touted by proponents of Office 2.0 (=pure online collaboration and productivity applications) is that you never have to worry about losing your data, because the company who provides the storage will also provide backup.  I agree that this sounds like a great proposition. I am terrible at backing-up my data on a regular basis, and I assume that a company providing data storage services would do a better job of it than I would. 

But this is only an assumption - how will I KNOW they are doing it?  I recently spoke with some Microsoft Research folk about the Skype protocol, and they raised an interesting point.  When someone uses Skype would s/he really know how well it worked?  Would the user notice if 10% of the time his contacts were actually on-line when they appeared off-line or vice-versa? 

How does this relate to my question of knowing that my documents are being backed up? 

With data storage, I’m sure we all have a big chunk of stuff we save “in case we ever need it”, but we never get around to using it or don’t get back to it for a very long while.  What if that stuff disappeared – I’m not sure I would even notice.  Even if I started looking for a file 2 years down the road and couldn’t find it, I’m not sure I would my own memory that it had ever existed.

What’s more, if I’m ever sure that a document I had saved online, how would I be able to prove it?

One way that comes to mind is printing out a list of your files once in a while, but if I can remember to do that I can certainly remember to back up my data myself.  

What does the consumer SLA look like for data-storage services?  I'm sure enterprises will be able to get reasonable SLAs in place with auditing mechanisms, but what does the conversation with the consumer look like?  Will we see data-storage vendors offering consumers a monthly email with a list of their stored documents, in the way that credit card companies periodically report transactions ?