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View of clouds in the Rockies, Co |
There were questions raised about security and encryption,
which seems to be a major concern. One should realize that cloud solutions always
provide either a secure dedicated link, or, in case they use a public communication
infrastructure, it uses a VPN which provides encryption at the lower communication
level, or at the transport level using https or similar. The information exchange
is as secure as your credit card number when purchasing an on-line item in a
store such as Amazon or eBay.
There are some distinct advantages of the CD exchange over
cloud solutions: CD exchange is typically less inexpensive compared with a
cloud solution, the integration of a report might be challenging using the
cloud (they are typically added to the CD), and CD exchange is very simple: one
can just pop in the CD and look at the images. Importing and/or viewing the
images on a CD does not require an administrator in contrast to when importing
images from an external source such as the cloud.
Even although these could still be considered a niche applicator,
there are also challenges with exchanging video streams over the cloud because
of bandwidth limitations and support by the receiver PACS of the MPEG encoding.
In my opinion, cloud transfer will prevail over the exchange
of images using CD’s, but it will take some time. Cost reduction, and
simplicity will certainly accelerate the acceptance of the cloud.