First of all, since the original article was unkind enough to nowhere link to a first-hand account: Adobe Creative Cloud press release

Things have been moving this direction somewhat inexorably, both in terms of specific products, such as Adobe's Creative Cloud and SimCity 5, and in terms of computing in general. Autodesk (publishers of Maya, Autocad, 3DS Max, et al) is starting to experiment with processing in the cloud, where the only thing running on the local machine is the GUI, and the actual software remains on their servers. And some hardware manufacturers are starting to look toward situations where the end user has what is effectively a dumb terminal: input and output on the desk, with the computer itself physically located elsewhere, or perhaps even virtualized in a server. At the moment, it's not yet possible to compress the video signal quite enough for Internet delivery, but you can easily push it over a LAN. Ironically, it's not yet possible to send HDMI that way, so PC-over-IP, while it looks more secure on paper, actually re-opens the analog hole that the content producers have been working so hard to close.

I personally don't like it. I want to purchase my software and then not have to worry about ongoing costs to use it. Additionally, with every new release, somebody's custom tools get broken. We're still using 3DS Max 2012 at work because 2013 isn't compatible with many of our scripts and plug-ins. I've heard that Weta is still using Maya 4 for certain parts of their pipeline. If we project that forward, we can assume that eventually, mandatory updates will cause no end of headaches for pipeline developers.

As for the cloud storage end of things, I think it's safe to say that it will never be mandatory to use it. For one thing, I can't imagine when we'll have fast enough Internet service here in the US to be able to work with high resolution uncompressed 10-bit video with any kind of interactivity if the files are being stored in the cloud. I'm having a hard enough time managing it on gigabit ethernet when the servers are just down the hall. There's no way I'd want to try to work on my current project if my footage were in the cloud.

Security is, of course, another matter. I haven't really looked into what Adobe's doing there, but I would hazard a guess that they're at least trying to meet the MPAA's standards for access and encryption. If they can hit that target, then I would feel safe enough to put my own projects in their vault.