Cloud computing: Threat or Menace?

I did some sustainability consulting recently for a major computer company. We focused for the day on building a better understanding of their energy and material footprint and strategies; during the latter part of the afternoon, we zeroed in on testing the sustainability of their current business strategies. It turned out that, like many big computer industry players, this company is making its play in the “cloud computing” field.

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Posted by EmbraceUnity  on  01/20  at  12:55 AM

I thought about this too. Openness surely is key. It would be interesting to see how useful a distributed model would be for things like proxy servers, search engines, data warehousing, and so forth.

I know they have begun to distribute the tasks of the root DNS servers, which should slightly improve the resiliency of the core of the internet's plumbing.

However, services with sensitive material, like data warehousing, would be especially risky to distribute, but also risky to leave on corporate servers. My guess is that security and privacy issues could be diminished by a distributed system, if implemented with PGP with only fragments of files.

It seems like these sort of ideas could have particular usefulness in mesh networks.

Posted by M S Prasad  on  10/07  at  03:19 PM

Dear Sir ,
While your article is interesting , but is giving the down side of the technology. Come to think of it any new technology would have its plus & minuses or profit & loss.

The only saving grace in Cloud computing is , it is not a new technology buta consolidation of SaaS,Paas , IaaS into one, based on well studied security problems and solution for it.
The cloud does cater for risk managment features or Disaster recovery features.
Adequate measures for DDOS ( this is a only major security hazard ) attack.

Some new look being given to Application Security also.

It is not as bleak or dismal as we think the situation is in Cloud. Amazon , Google ( well they had a glitch recently), Microsoft, Times network are using Cloud .

It is sure that the hype created by vendors are more. think of it we had data center and all opted for it . It is still running.

well failure can always happen in any system nothing is 100 % guranteed ( mathematically this relaibility to acieve is next to impossible). but we live with this notion . so is with cloud.

The power grid can also fail inspite of its built in redundancy ...well for couple of hours we live in darkness and energy company looses revenue or the continuous process production units. Acceptable ... it is all 99.99 % max reliable with 0.01% of uncertainty.

Thanks

Posted by CygnusX1  on  10/07  at  07:04 PM

Quote : "My take is that cloud computing, for all of its apparent (and supposed) benefits, stands to lose legitimacy and support (financial and otherwise) when the first big, millions-of-people-affecting, failure hits. Companies that tie themselves too closely to this particular model, as either service providers or customers, could be in real trouble. Conversely, if the big failure hits before cloud has swept up lots of users and visibility, the failure could be a signal to shift towards a more resilient model."

I think you have this spot on, the phrase "never put all your eggs in one basket" applies here and this has always been the case. Networking computers and the Internet, and the NC client is not a new idea, one of the proponents, (and leading opponents of the Microsoft monopoly of PC software), is Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

Can you really envisage any large corporation or financial institution placing reliance upon any "cloud" based system for apps, datacoms, or data storage in the near future? I would certainly hope not, and I would not have any confidence or place any trust with any institution that would.

Whilst this may promote benefits for small business scenarios to reduce computing and IT costs, and thus source out all of their problems concerning software requirements and network securities, and whilst an internetworking consumer base may be easily and readily available to take advantage of, any major institution would be foolish to subscribe to this on a large scale in these early days.

Any large system must have and will have a contingency for failures built in, yet the main issues are not only failures to service but data protection and security. How can you possibly police and secure such a large system that has an open source style interface for the diversity of connections and clients required? How do you stop hacking on a massive scale?

Would it be practicable for institutions such as banks, police and governments, security and intelligence organisations, tax services etc. to even contemplate using these kinds of services in the near future?

Yet for any such system to be eventually successful will require its "beta" testers and failures. Like any other innovation, for the ideal of a centralised computer network and internet-work of clients and terminals to become a reality, must require its evolution from a clunky half-baked system to a secure and resilient one. And you cannot get from A to Z without the trials and errors.

If the future holds the dream of a centralised computer network that is freely available for all citizens to use as and when required, (without any baggage required), then these may be the first early steps that we see for this computer evolution. However as data storage, PCs and even software prices are presently at an all time low, I fail to see any real benefits from these services. I would still place greater trust in my own system for data storage and applications usage.

Posted by CygnusX1  on  10/13  at  04:40 PM

Concerning "clouds", data loses and sidekicks

With outage, Sidekick service loses its footing..
A prolonged outage for users of T-Mobile's Sidekick device gets even worse as Microsoft's Danger unit says that their lost Sidekick data may be gone forever
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10372974-94.html?tag=nl.e703

Sidekick outage casts cloud over Microsoft..
The massive data failure at Microsoft's Danger subsidiary threatens to put a dark cloud over the company's broader "software plus services" strategy.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10372525-56.html?tag=nl.e703

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