We wrote a couple of weeks ago on a Business Week article by Gene Marks, Tech Trends to Ignore. Today we ran across a rebuttal.

Tim Berry takes a look at the areas that Marks covered in his original column, and takes some issues with Berry’s condemnation of up-and-coming tech trends such as RFID and Software as a Service:

Gene Marks: Software in this form makes sense for certain customers—among them, trusting souls comfortable letting other companies hold onto their data; honest, hard-working people who believe the Internet is completely reliable and that data will be secure and can be retrieved regardless of what happens to their provider; business owners who are O.K. paying a monthly amount per user that generally winds up being more expensive over time than purchasing a system outright. Then there are the rest of us—cynical, slothful, apathetic, and miserable. We don’t trust anyone—especially with customer and financial data. For SaaS, the jury’s still out. But keep an eye on it nonetheless.

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And the rebuttal:

Tim Berry:  I suppose, but seriously, have you seen Google Apps? Now take a look at Netbooks. And watch the numbers on how online bookkeeping is going.

Something has changed.  I remember talking to a very high-level executive at Intuit 10 years ago when they started to look at online bookkeeping. He said “the analysts want it and the journalists want it, but the customers don’t.” That was then, this is now. Customers want it.

Who would you rather have backing up your data: you? your bright nephew? Or Google, Intuit, or Amazon?

Check out the full article here.