Hey, y'ever hear of (oh, shoot, what do the kids call it?) cloud computing?
No? What is it, you say? Well, only the future of the Internet, that's all!
Everybody's talking about it. We fell in love with it in 2010, and it's still all the rage with enterprises and consumers alike (the kids love it, too!). Microsoft even based an entire marketing campaign for Windows 7 on cloud computing.
On Thursday, April 21, at 1:41 a.m. PDT, a large segment of Amazon's cloud computing platform (including much of Amazon Web Services) went down -- and stayed down as of this writing.
Amazon is the world's largest cloud computing provider. The outage knocked out manypopular services, including Foursquare, Reddit, Quora, SCVNGR, Praxeon, Hootsuite, and Sporcle (high-larious names, too!).
As enterprises race to replace distributed networking solutions with cloud computing, the Web is becoming much more centralized. Web centralization leads to more problems with reliability and security. It leaves the Web more susceptible to router problems and targeted attacks, and causes devastating domino effects when something goes wrong.
While cloud computing is great for easily sharing data, and is an invitingly economical option for startups with little funding, too many Internet-based providers have become too entrenched in cloud storage. They rely upon centralized third-parties for their most crucial business function: being online.
What should have been a limited solution has turned into a fad, and what should have been a short-lived fad has become a primary long-term strategy. It doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Government is getting in on the act, too, and providers are eagerly battling for government contracts for cloud services (even if it means fudging the truth about security).
Cloud computing has its place. It has certainly revolutionized the shared Web. The real-time sharing it allows can boost enterprise productivity, and its refinement is necessary for important innovations like electronic health records.
Nonetheless, it is not a viable replacement for local storage (and it will not be anytime soon) -- especially when it comes to Internet companies. Overreliance on the cloud can leave your content and sensitive data at the mercy of a third-party that you don't control, turn otherwise small technical glitches into major outages and data losses, and invite devastating security attacks and PR nightmares.
Cloud computing is a useful tool -- and just that. Not everything needs to be on the cloud; in fact, most things are better left to local solutions. This growing trend of overcentralization of the Web, if it continues, will lead only to trouble.
After all (ahem), when it rains, it pours. And when you have a lot of clouds, you're bound to have a storm.
(Come on, you knew it was coming.)
— Joe Stanganelli is a writer, attorney, and communications consultant. He is also principal and founding attorney of Beacon Hill Law in Boston. Follow him on Twitter at @JoeStanganelli.
When it comes to ERP for SMB's, I know from personal research that these companies are not going for Cloud computing solutions for the very reasons of this type of outage. Many are concerned that such critical data on their manufacturing operations e.g. suppliers, customers, accounts, etc. are too risky in the cloud.
kq4ym, are you referring to the CR-48? If so, that's a notebook that uses only wireless Internet connectivity. It's not dependent on a specific cloud service, to my knowledge.
The moral of this story is that we must be strategic and thoughtful about how we adopt the cloud. Thus using it for what best suits is strengths and keeping way from using it where is can cause serious damage.
Google's planned introduction of a "cloud" computing device is supposed to rain down on the world sometime this summer. (Maybe the word "cloud" should be changed to something less pun prone)
The test notebook, the Chrome C4-48, handed out to tens of thousands of folks like me in recent months has worked well. After some confusion of just what the cloud is and is not, and realizing quickly that most everyone is already using cloud computing anyway, the sleek black beauty with a solid state drive became one with m
Now Amazon's cloud hiccup this past week was probably not on Google's list of what else could go wrong, but the publicity probably is scaring a few folks there and everywhere.
But, in the end it's economics that will prevail, if the cloud can do it cheaper then so goes it. Google's rumored plan is to give away the new notebooks and charge a dozen or so dollars a month for the cloud service, probably including some free time on Verizon's high speed network. Yes, the Cr-48 only works when connected to the cloud through wi-fi or Verizon.
My thought was the cloud computer might sel well for $200 or less, and probably Google will make such an option available this summer. What with instand and hassle free software updates, quick booting (15 seconds) and a small learning curve, Google should at last convice millions out there, that the cloud is here, and it's not going away anytime soon.
I agreee - You have to weigh your options when it comes down to what YOU'RE going to do with YOUR data. Many salesmen are going to brand this as the savior service, but in in the end you're the one taking the risk.
Agreed - But what happens when "The Cloud" was your disaster recovery plan.
It really comes down to having a proper BCP and taking the appropriate amount of risk for the applications that you have installed. For some companies this solution is the only way they'd have a disaster recovery plan, but for others it might be useful to look at brining it back in house or not completely putting all your eggs in one basket.
Not having complete control over the data still slightly scares me.
Cloud services could actually make great DR alternatives - but they should not be both the live and the DR in the same system (especially when you don't know where the system is going to run at any given time).
Using the storage in the cloud as your backup could be a risk -- if you needed the data when the outage was happening....but that could be a risk with any offsite provider -- maybe bigger given the model and lack of commitments from many cloud providers -- need to keep the cost down somehow.
The strategy needs to be to diversify and spread the risk. Use different components, but don't think you can't do IT 101 because it is not in your house.
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With 24/7 processing and business continuation paramount, more organizations are considering having three datacenters, where primary and secondary datacenters are in their immediate region and a third is in a remote geography. Why? To avoid repercussions of a major disaster that could hit every IT resource in a specific region.
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