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arguments are mostly based on fear of bad happenings that could come from the loss of control. Perhaps this is a kind of litmus test to identify the emergence of new modes of outsourcing? And indeed, we find this type of argument applied against uptake of Cloud Computing. Often cited are issues of "management of the cloud." Specifically, worries about security, latency, service levels, and availability are issues that rightly concern IT executives. Examples of point failures can be used to feed this argument, as in this caution from Paul Wallis at keystonesanddivits: "Given current technological circumstances, and recent events like The Gulf cables being cut and Amazon S3 failing, today the business is being asked to take a leap of faith to put mission critical applications in The Cloud." But in fact, it could be argued that these service outages were no worse than would have occurred if an internal IT shop had similarly failed. So should we require that Cloud Computing needs to be more available than internal IT?
Another type of argument against Cloud Computing is that it is simply more work than it is worth: "As all-encompassing as it may seem, the so-called 'cloud' is in fact made of up several clouds, and getting your data from one to another isn't as easy as IT managers would like. This ties to platform issues, which can leave data in a format that few or no other cloud accepts, and also reflects the bandwidth costs associated with moving data from one cloud to another." (GigaOM)
A related issue is lock-in where the outsourcer controls your fate and can dictate terms and constrain flexibility: "Most clouds force participants to rely on a single platform or host only one type of product. Amazon Web Services is built on the LAMP stack, Google Apps Engine locks users into proprietary formats, and Windows lovers out there have GoGrid for supporting computing offered by the ServePath guys. If you need to support multiple platforms, as most enterprises do, then you're looking at multiple clouds. That can be a nightmare to manage." (GigaOM) This is shown to be empirically true by looking at the average of 18 months it takes companies bought by Google to re-enter the market on Google's proprietary platform. Evidentially they must spend lots of effort adapting to Google's base.
Then there is strategic value worry: applications going to the cloud are one thing, putting your data in the cloud is another, possibly greater, area of risk. Data is often a competitive asset; something you should hold close. But today, data is also becoming a liability. New regulatory requirements and the PR nightmares of theft or unintended data
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Data is often a competitive asset; something you should hold close. But today, data is also becoming a liability.
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disclosure are significantly raising the cost of management of data. Would it not make sense to outsource storage and management of the data so someone else assumes this liability? Unfortunately today, that is not the case, outsourcers too can lose data, and the collector/owner/user still pays the PR price. So to be successful here, computing clouds will need to provide greater data security and reliability than is found in the current market and at cheaper costs than internal storage and management. And since storage today is cheap, competent management of the data is the key issue.
These counter arguments are becoming strident as Cloud Computing becomes a force in the marketplace. Microsoft will offer desktop services as SaaS starting next year, joining Google's Gmail and Yahoo's Zimbra. ZoHo, a startup SaaS desktop services provider currently in beta, is pre-integrating with name-brand CRMs and plans to launch commercially quite soon. Desktop services and CRM are the bread-and-butter of today's IT departments. This represents a significant destabilizing force in corporate IT environments.
Every Cloud Has A Silicon Lining
For those of us involved in new telecom products and in telecom operations, how will Cloud Computing affect telecom? Is there an advantage posed by Cloud Computing being network-based that our industry can leverage?
A key issue is the relative cost of computing vs. transmitting information and connecting to networks. We even see costs effects in simple local networking which can flip a cloud from grids (lots of simple computers networked together) to supercomputers. Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, tells us "IBM has launched an ambitious initiative, called Project Kittyhawk, aimed at building 'a global-scale shared computer capable of hosting the entire Internet as an application'. " What is shaping up is a technical race, a war of supercomputer vs. grids vs. clustered servers. However, all these can fit within the business context of Cloud Computing. Few companies need, let alone can afford, a Kittyhawk, so likely it will be used as a shared cloud. But nowhere does networking determine advantage, only cost.
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