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Like it or not, it's time to get a cloud strategy

Convince superiors and customers that paying indefinitely for something you have zero real control over is a "good idea" and is somehow "superior." It isn't: the loss of control and the inability to confidently or ethically promise an SLA are worth their weight in gold, a fact you will learn the hardest way possible the first time the vendor says that "due to circumstances beyond our control your data is gone! Force mejure!"

Either way it won't stay there. Pie in the sky, along with byod. Sounds good on paper, but the risks involved are extremely high. Not worth the investment or headache. Control your data.

That is.... the stupid question
Should we give up our fast and secure gigabit lines and servers for super slow and unreliable internet lines.
And with the death of unlimited bandwidth in Canada, it's a no brainer.

I think you might be talking about a consumer segment. Not sure your claim holds any water. I like to see evidence of this. Don't think this is the case anymore. At least for your typical organization's requirements.

What the benefits are for those businesses which don't need the ability to change their systems rapidly? Those that have very stable and predictable needs?

If it's for all as the article implies, lets see examples outside big-business. What about technical users? How is it an advantage for my architect friend who has a practice employing 2 people, has stayed at that size for 29 years and has no need or desire to increase his workload or income?

Lets forget about the minority of people that work in large corporations and concentrate on the majority for a change.

Hopefully the articles coming up will answer these questions.

So long as his ISP can guarantee 99.99% uptime then maybe it will work for him. Remember no internet means no access to your documents. If you keep a local copy then maybe he can negate this risk but backups still need to be run on this data which removes one of the benifits of the cloud.

Fast food is a multi-billion dollar industry; that doesn't mean I'll be healthier with a strategy to eat more of it.

For reasons outside our control, we've lost Internet access twice in the last three months. The severed fiber line thirty miles away left us running exclusively on in-house resources for almost six hours. We're a relatively stable environment; scaling and 'on demand' aren't concerns.

With that said, I look forward to the future articles on this subject. How the shoes are made will be interesting, even if they won't fit my feet.

When a declared that you can't argue with a billion dollar industry, I was claiming that the cloud was dogma. Well, at least in that passage. Regardless if you agree with it, or think its "healthy", you'll eventually have to move to the cloud, because that is the only place even hardware providers like Dell or HP are going to provide a cost-effective solution, because it's more profitable for them to be cloud providers. It's kind of like a "if you can't beat 'em, join in" type of situation.

nt

See this article: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-08-27/hp-dell-pc-makers-in-desperate-need-of-a-reboot, or particularly the phrase: "Both HP and Dell want a piece of the action because cloud computing and Big Data boast higher margins and growth opportunities than the PC business."

The Business Week link returned a 'Page Not Found'. Maybe it would have cleared up what confused me about your last post.

"...you'll eventually have to move to the cloud, because that is the only place even hardware providers like Dell or HP are going to provide a cost-effective solution..."

I understood this to mean those vendors would eventually be less interested in selling servers directly to individual customer, that they'd be more interested in providing servers in cloud services or getting into the business themselves. But then you quoted this:

"Both HP and Dell want a piece of the action because cloud computing and Big Data boast higher margins and growth opportunities than the PC business."

I understand the cloud as more a replacement for local servers than local desktop / client systems. How does the profitability of the PC market force me to the cloud? If no one is going to sell me a client system then how am I going to access resources, whether they're on the cloud or a local server? Certainly not on a phone or tablet.

Maybe I don't understand 'cloud' after all.

often been spoken of, but people used the older term of 'smoke and mirrors.'

I would have to say that moving to the cloud can be a good thing, but it also has its pitfalls. Im not talking about the technology used, or how secure their DC is, but the most important thing is that the provider that is going to work with you and not treat you like a number. You can have a company with the best technology and the most secure facility, but if they treat you like &%$ or make you jump through 15 hoops to get things done then its not worth it. If something goes wrong or a "service" call takes too long the vendor will always try to defend it by stating that they have met their SLA, or "we will look at improving the level of service." Ive seen too many companies with vendors delivering a bad service where you cant get things done and unfortunately the company is stuck because they cant move because of either a contract or its too expensive to migrate.

Check out hosting services like Rackspace, as they can provide the attention you require. Of course, you'll have to pay a premium, but again, the benefits most likely outweigh the added cost.

the state and federal laws on privacy require them to keep the data secured and in-house. Since they have to maintain the in-house servers for that, it makes sense to keep it all there. I have suggested to a couple they consider an internal cloud type system, what is essentially a browser based thin client solution using the same technology but on their in-house servers.

No Australian company can be sure they still meet the state and federal privacy laws if they place any client or staff personal information on a cloud based server, and thus they're open to major fines and possible time inside.

I'm not familiar with Australian privacy law, but you raise a valid concern. In the states, certain agencies, like the SEC, currently make the cloud a nonviable solution. I'm thinking about tackling this in a separate post, because it warrants it, but I'm not sure I have the energy. Anyway, I have to do more research on the subject, but from my understanding, many organizations are too conservative when it comes to governance and compliance in respect to the cloud. Everything has a trade-off and a certain level of risk. There are definitely certain industries where the cloud is hands off, but you shouldn't rule out the cloud be doing your diligence. Again, this is a great topic. Thanks for sharing!

at the laws in Ireland and the UK. Some of those specifically say it's against the law to ship or store the data off shore, but do allow for a cloud storage solution that meets certain security arrangements and can prove the data will never, under any circumstances, leave the country. Now that will be an interesting aspect for the service providers to prove; especially the multi-nationals as even backup copies aren't allowed to leave the country.

A packet of data gets routed via another country. Even if it's only there for a microsecond, it still left the country.

nt

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. - Bertrand Russell

so anything transmitted through a comms sat has left the country to hit the sat, even if it starts and lands back in the same country.

Good point dogknees, but services like Windows Azure and Google Cloud Storage do offer the ability to select the country where your data is to reside.

leave that country for any reason, not even as a back up of their site. To provide in country back up of their site they'd need two widely separate sites in the same country big enough to handle the work of all they do in that country.

Fight with all your might this plague of cloud computing. Why any company in their right mind would let their corporate data out of their control is ludicrous!! Cloud computing has been around for years far longer than this new buzz word. It was and still is being done with businesses that have mainframes. Most all of the data is centralized (in a cloud) on the mainframe. The mainframe is far safer than the internet cloud. It's not if, but when there will be a breach of the internet cloud.

been broken into.

1. A number of companies that offered free or cheap data storage via the Internet have closed down at short notice and not given all their clients / users sufficient time to recover their data before the servers were shut down.

2. Internet based hosting services are a form of cloud computing. In the recent court cases with the company MegaUpload the company that hosted their servers had over a hundred system confiscated by the US law enforcement people so they could examine them. Last I heard the was no talk of handing them back or reimbursing the hosting service for the cost of the systems. The loss of so much assets was a severe financial blow to both MegaUpload and the hosting company, and both may end up closing down despite the fact the early court ruling are the US feds are in the wrong.

...............

Now for the scary thoughts:-

Picture a very rich criminal organisation setting up a business to offer Cloud Computing Services at a very good price. They don't need to make a lot off the fees they charge, they can make a fortune via data mining of the clients' information stored on their servers and using it to their advantage.

Many cloud services offer both LDAP and encryption services (e.g., Symantec's E-mail Encryption Service). Don't let your paranoia/bias misguide you; networking is networking.

Would you tackle the problem of foreign countries accessing my data? Foreign country here meaning the USA and it's security bureaus.

Locks (and LDAP and encryption) are for honest people. If somebody wants the data, they'll figure out a way to get it.

I beginning to think more cloud haters read this blog than cloud enthusiasts. I challenge skeptics to address your biases and consider what historical advancements in technology has done for the world. For instance, if not for Henry Ford, would we all still be riding horses just because the are more elegant or pretty? Instead of coming up with excuses as to why not to use the cloud, challenge yourself to think how it can make your users more productive, or how it might save your organization $!

have had a lot more to do with ensuring compliance and performance in difficult security situations, and thus we're a little more pragmatic and knowledgeable about the issues involved.

I know of one educational facility that has multiple campuses in the one city. They decided it was cheaper and easier to have dedicated lines from the smaller campuses that did all their storage and log on through the servers at the main campus. A guy with a backhoe ripped up the comms lines that included their dedicated lines and for two days there was no computer based services or capabilities at the small campus concerned. Until the line was fixed and checked the campus was closed as no one could log on to any computers and some of the high security buildings wouldn't open due to not being able to verify the access codes with the main campus server. The cost to the campus in lost time and services etc was over a hundred times the cost of having the servers duplicated on site - that issue was remedied on all external campuses within a month. These sort of incidents are rare, but in many work areas they are the sort of incident that can't be allowed to happen even once.

How many of these wonderful outsourcing ideas in recent years/decades have started off as a short term financial gain but ended up costing far more in the long run and the user has lost some control over aspects of his business decisions as a result? Once "they" have all your data and services safely ensconced on their systems how long before you start paying through the nose and at the same time have little control over security/integrity?