There is a lot of talk, and advertising, the days that are pushing cloud computing. I am still not sold on it for small businesses, in most cases.
It is better, in my opinion, to run your own server, and software. At least that way, you have control over what is done, and where the data is stored. There have been numerous cases of various cloud systems being taken off-line for hours, or even days. If you are on one of those clouds that goes down, then there is nothing that you can do. In fact, in many cases, there is not even the communications that would allow you to have an idea of when it will be back up, and your people can get back to work.
By keeping your systems in-house, if something does go down you can at least know what is being done to resolve the issue. You, and your support provider, can isolate the problem, contact the appropriate people such as your internet provider, and get feedback on expected resolution times. The overall downtime may, or may not, be reduced, but you will have the information as to what is going on. With that information, you are in a better position to make decisions, such as “Do I send my employees home for the day?”
The security of your data is also something to think about. While the vast majority of cloud services are as secure as your own system will be, you are still trusting your data to some unknown entity. Also, while your systems will be probed by hackers, they are not going to spend a lot of time targeting your system. Large data repositories, however, will get special attention from them. The more time and angles they take on a site, the greater the chance that a weakness is found.
All in all, I just feel that it is better for a small business to have complete control over their data, and daily operations.