Where does data belong?

Jon Udell wants a central repository for his digital assets, which include not just photos/videos/blog posts/etc, but also medical/financial/other records, and maybe social networking profiles/contacts too.

"Some are on websites that I control, and a lot more that I don’t. Others are on local hard disks that I control, and a lot more that I don’t... I’d be willing to pay for the service of consolidating all this stuff, syndicating it to wherever it’s needed, and guaranteeing its availability throughout — and indeed beyond — my lifetime."

He imagines a scenario that begins at birth: "In addition to a social security number, everyone gets a handle to a chunk of managed storage." The question is, where would this storage be located? Ilya Baimetov and I have been discussion 4 possible alternatives:

1. A "virtual personal server", as envisioned by Rod Boothby:

Your data would reside not in one single location but across a collection of services (such as Flickr, Zoho, etc) that you stitch together via interoperable APIs. The main drawback is, in order for your personal server to function properly, all underlying services must be up and running. In addition, Ilya points out that the larger your files, the less feasible it becomes to send them over the Internet for processing.

2. An enterprise-class storage system maintained by a hosting provider, as discussed in Hitachi CTO Hu Yoshida's recent blog post:

Ilya thinks it would be most efficient if you used applications that are hosted in the same data center also. But since this would require hosting providers to reach FAR beyond their accustomed role and get involved with selecting/maintaining/integrating/supporting large numbers of 3rd party apps, I'm not optimistic it will result in a coherent end user experience.

3. Multiple web apps, one storage vault:

Some time ago Fred Wilson mentioned he'd like to store his Gmail/Flickr/TypePad files on a 3rd party system so that he has more control over his data. OmniDrive CEO Nik Cubrilovic says that's exactly what he'd like to help accomplish.

"The idea is to aggregate your content from different apps and have them all in one place. Your files get cached with Omnidrive; from there you can open them up on your desktop or drag them into another folder which is linked to another app."

Of course, now you become dependent on OmniDrive's performance. Ilya also worries about the data transfer speed between OmniDrive and various apps.

4. Multiple web apps, distributed storage vault:

There's another storage provider called Cleversafe; its software splits your files into dozens of encrypted slices and stores each at a different data center. You can access your data as long as (and only when) you're able to access a majority of the slices. This simultaneously prevents data loss and unauthorized access. I'm fascinated by the possibility that when you sign up for Salesforce, Google Apps, etc in the future, you'd give each service your Cleversafe key so that any content you create is immediately encrypted/dispersed. But Ilya isn't sure it's possible to dis-assemble/re-assemble data on the fly without impacting performance.

Jon says a "hosted lifebits" service seems inevitable in the long run. Ilya thinks the shortest path between here and there is #2; he's even developed standards to help make it happen. I'm intrigued with #4 but thinking #1 is most realistic for now. You?