Cloud computing- Your opinion.

[Eddie Dane]

I've been experimenting with Google docs and I must say I quite like it.

It's just great having your files ready where and when you need them.
Sometimes I work on texts with external copywriters,and it's great for that too.

But there are some dangers that I can think of, and I hope to get an opinion of the more computer literate on these forums.

Security:
How safe is this actually? My files are stored god-knows-where on a server. Is there a significant security risk?

Reliability:
Gmail goes down from time-to-time. If the timing is bad (I have deadlines) this could get me in trouble.

Control:
I feel just a bit weird about giving so much control to an outside party. It's unlikely that they would ever deny me access to my files, but I do give control away in some measure.

What do you think of Google Doc (and similar)?
If you had a company, would you let your employees use it?

[madurobob]

Its a good idea and will get better. There are security concerns, but I'm not sure they are a show stopper. Salesforce.com, for instance, is huge. Many companies large and small log their sales lead data there with little fear of it being stolen or abused. The big HW and SW companies are all developing products to create, manage or exploit both public and private clouds and I'm sure we'll see a LOT more of this in the near future.

As a business owner I'd be concerned with google docs for highly sensitive information - M&A target info, key strategy stuff and the like. But, for the bulk of the day-to-day drudgery.. why not?

[nimzov]

I have run a web server on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

It costs around 10 cents per hour to run your instance of a web server. Less expensive than to rent a dedicated server as you pay by the hours used.

I have just use it a couple of hours by curiosity. It's an interesting concept.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJfTqDU6kqE

[six7s]

Google's Eric Schmidt was recently interviewed at the Gartner Symposium/IT^xpo and he had a few things to say about cloud computing...

www.readwriteweb.com What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years

Full 45-minute video:

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the JREF. The JREF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

news.cnet.com Cloud computing security forecast: Clear skies January 27, 2009

Quote:

To critics, cloud computing can't be trusted because you aren't in control of the data outside your network.

But if that's the case, then how secure are the data and collocation centers that corporations contract with to host their data?

<snip/>

...handing over the data is still a cause for concern among many corporations.

"What are they doing to the data? Is it persistently encrypted? Are there access controls in place? Do you get to monitor who they hire and who cleans the data centers at night?" said Phil Dunkelberger, chief executive of PGP Corp. in relaying the concerns on peoples' minds about cloud computing.

<snip/>

Securing the data is key to a cloud service provider's business, Selipsky said. "We can afford to devote resources to it that, quite frankly, most of our customers can't," he added.

"Cloud computing can be as secure, if not more secure, than the traditional environment," said Eran Feigenbaum, director of security for Google Apps. "Most organizations really struggle, whether they want to admit it or not, securing their networks."

<snip/>

Then there are the statistics that show that one-third of breaches result from stolen or lost laptops and other devices and from employees accidentally exposing data on the Internet, with nearly 16 percent due to insider theft.

"Cloud computing can fix some of these issues," Feigenbaum said.

<snip/>

Most data theft results from someone authorized to access the data doing so improperly or handling the data carelessly, he said. With cloud-based services, when a user logs out, the browser cache can be set to flush automatically, leaving nothing on the desktop to be lost or stolen, and logs can show who did what to which data, he added.

"This is inherently safer than the typical client-server model of downloading data that remains on the end-user device, and is far more secure than distributing data as e-mail attachments whose subsequent use and transmittal are largely uncontrolled," Coffee wrote in an e-mail reply to questions.

<snip/>

There have also been precursors to cloud computing that people are familiar with, such as the evolution of answering machines to voice mail services, said Peter Evans, director of security strategy and technology integration at IBM Security Systems.

"It is as much an emotional thing as anything," Evans said. "When my data is on my server in my building, there is a good gut feeling about that. When it's out in the ether, how do I know it's protected?"

[arthwollipot]

I've got no idea what cloud computing even is. The company I technically work for seems to think that it's a good idea though.

[six7s]

Gmail is an example of cloud computing

Your emails 'live' on a Google server out there in the mists of teh etherwebs, not on your hard drive (unless you download them, of course)

The cloud symbol has long been a metaphor for the Internet

[arthwollipot]

Ah. Okay. So can you explain it in the context of the following statement - which I copied from an all-staff message I received earlier today?

"Some organizations prefer a private-cloud solution for mission-critical applications using sensitive data in order to retain maximum control over their own and their customers' information. <Organisation> meets that need with the Secure Private Cloud Solution."

Does that mean that Gmail requires a password to access it?

[six7s]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

Ah. Okay. So can you explain it in the context of the following statement - which I copied from an all-staff message I received earlier today?

I can guess...

Maybe "a private-cloud solution" involves an intranet (cf the Internet), which - presumably - has its own security features (e.g log in and password)

Quote:

Does that mean that Gmail requires a password to access it?

Well... Gmail (like this forum) requires a password, by default... Without 'extra' security (typically imposed by your own IT department), you can 'save' your username and password onto your local machine so that you log in automagically

[arthwollipot]

Okay, that makes a certain amount of sense, kinda. Thanks.

[Eddie Dane]

Google apps offers a whole package of interesting "cloud" applications.

Theoretically you could run your whole office on Google apps, providing you had a broadband internet connection.

First there's Gmail, which can be configured to have a custom email address (You@it.com) rather than the cheapo looking @gmail.com
Then there's a whole office suite, of which the only drawbacks are that the spraedsheet programs cannot handle the really complex stuff (apparently).
But you can calculate, word process and make presentations to your heart's content.
The big advantage is that you can share everything on line, like working on the same text document with someone without sending new versions back and forth (which is an absolute horror).

It's free for private use, and for business use, I believe the fee is quite small.

If I were starting my own small-scale business today, I think I'd plonk down a couple of Ubuntu machines, get two separate broadband connections (two, just to have backup) and run my office from the net.
Make your calls using VOIP, and you're in business with apretty low overhead.

[Vermonter]

I'm actually doing a presentation and a paper about cloud computing security, oddly enough. It's nothing major, but I've found some neat info. A lot of companies already use it. Facebook and Wikipedia for example are using the distributed model to host their content. Amazon.com has several companies that offer content-delivery services in a cloud format (similar to how Akamai works). SETI@home is a neat usage of cloud computing for research, and BitTorrent works in a similar fashion. It's a form of distributed computing, and the concept isn't new, the concept has been around since the 1960s.

There are lots of security concerns. Who is responsible for the data? Is each participator using the same security methods? How is the data encrypted? How do you keep corporate information contained and secure? Cloud clusters may be spread out around the globe, so some clusters may not have physical security.

Different service providers have differing answers. I think Google is using a pretty decent model. Any decent provider will use a strong encryption for account information and use SSL (which is solid, but has flaws) when logging in. Downtime is kept to a minimum, but as you know things can go down. With cloud clusters it should prevent most issues even in the event of physical clusters going down.

Private clouds are an extension of the regular cloud format. I think it's similar to a VIP suite in an exclusive club. The problem with normal clouds is that the user has little control over how the information is stored. Critical data could be physically on the same disk as someone's cat photos, for instance. Private clouds create create a special protected cloud within the cloud that requires a secure (such as VPN) connection to access it. That way, presumably, only users with authorization (who have been authorized to have the VPN connection information and logins) can access it. It is another layer of security. I think most clouds are secure by nature because that's what customers want, but virtual private clouds are a few steps further.

A neat thing about clouds is that all of the technical stuff is abstracted from the user. They don't need to know how or where the apps and data are stored and used - they can just use it. Google Apps has a dashboard for all of their apps that customers can use.

I think that software as a service will become more prevalent as bandwidth increases. Even at work we use software piped in through a cluster of Citrix servers. Very few programs are actually loaded onto the machines. We even have a bunch of Wyse thinclients that do not have physical drives, it's all loaded through the network when someone logs in. Granted, our thinclients are horrid, but they work in a pinch.

[lauwersw]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

"Some organizations prefer a private-cloud solution for mission-critical applications using sensitive data in order to retain maximum control over their own and their customers' information. <Organisation> meets that need with the Secure Private Cloud Solution."

I think there are two main motivations for cloud computing. Gmail is an example of the first one, where the main importance is put on being able to access your data from everywhere.

The main motivator though is efficiency, which is also a valid reason to use Gmail. The classical way to run an IT infrastructure was to buy separate machines for every single task that had to be performed. All these servers must be managed separately and take a lot of space and power. Often they are underused, while other servers are getting overburdened, which makes managing very expensive.

The idea behind clouds is that you pool all servers together and offer virtual computers running on this "cloud". You can create and delete virtual servers on the fly, often within minutes. For example if you have known peaks in your computer load, you can expand the capacity for that particual virtual server or create new instances at one time of the day, and reduce them when the peak is over. The capacity that becomes available can be used for other services. If one physical server goes down, load is shifted to others automatically, so you don't really care.

The idea is born in companies that have already really large amounts of servers, like Google and Amazon. Amazon has this running as a commercial service "EC2" and offers pre-made virtual machines, running Windows and Linux. Everything is on demand and you pay only for what you use (cpu, disk, network, ...)

If you don't trust your data being on external machines, you can create such a cloud inside your own data center. I think that's what they're talking about in your quote. Some companies sell "cloud-creation" software. I've heard even that Amazon has plans to extend their cloud inside your own data-center. They are managing everything for you remotely, but your own data stays inside your data center.

I've just started at a job where they are using a bit of Amazon EC2. Let me tell you in a few months how useful that appears to be.

[arthwollipot]

Isn't this just like the "thin client" craze from ten years ago?

[Eddie Dane]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

Isn't this just like the "thin client" craze from ten years ago?

Perhaps.

But I'm not an IT guy.
Ten years ago this was something our IT guys talked about over lunch, and I barely understood what they were talking about.
Today it is something that I just tried out for free, from home and without any special knowledge.

Seems like it has finally arrived.

[daSkeptic]

The general concepts of cloud computing are not new. For decades, people have been buying CPU-time and storage-space in each other's data-centers. Until relatively recently this has been limited to academia, government, and large corporations. What's new is that these services are now available to the public.

[arthwollipot]

Right. Okay, I get it. It basically is the thin-client idea of ten years ago, but done in a manner that actually works.

Larry Ellison must be kicking himself right about now.

[cyborg]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

Isn't this just like the "thin client" craze from ten years ago?

No; one is called a "thin client solution" and the other is called a "cloud solution".

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by Eddie Dane

Reliability:
Gmail goes down from time-to-time. If the timing is bad (I have deadlines) this could get me in trouble.

This is the main reason I'll stick to MS Office or whatever else will come by for the foreseeable future. It's not just the Gmail, it is also my ISP, my modem and my network card, all of which can fail. If any of that happens on, say, the evening of a long weekend (for example, thursday, dec 24th) and I need to have them done by monday, it creates an essentially unsolvable problem.

I know the solution isn't perfect, but it's better to rely on as few failable devices as possible, IMHO

McHrozni

[daSkeptic]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

Right. Okay, I get it. It basically is the thin-client idea of ten years ago, but done in a manner that actually works.

I guess you could say that, sure. The reason thin-clients failed before was not so much because of the client machines themselves, but because support for them was not there. We didn't have Amazon and Google and whoever else providing the masses with cheap storage and computing clusters. We didn't have double-digit megabit connectivity to the average home. We have those things now.

[madurobob]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

Right. Okay, I get it. It basically is the thin-client idea of ten years ago, but done in a manner that actually works.

Yeah, sort of. But, toss virtualization into the mix as well. Now, not only do you have a server out there serving up applications that would otherwise be installed on your computer, but that server is likely a virtual server, one of several virtual servers on a box that scale automatically and may even be mirrored on other boxes. So, it matters less what box the server is on, what box has the actual applications installed, and what box stores your saved work.

I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future some enterprises have simple workstations with nothing but a very thin OS and a browser or a portal/portlet to their cloud. Almost exactly replicating the mainframe/dumb terminal setup... of the 70s. An enterprise like Google could do this for customers such that millions of users could have a very rich internet experience with little more than a TV as a home computer.

[Vermonter]

IBM had their time-sharing concept in the 70s. That allowed users access to their mainframe and shared resources and applications for a fee, metered out like a utility.

Software-as-a-service is becoming economical due to bandwidth, and it works well for some applications and needs.

The company I work for bought a ton of these little guys:


This is a ThinClient. It cost about $150 for one. If it breaks, you swap it out in a few minutes. It's got a firmware chip on it, and everything else is piped in through Ethernet or WiFi. They aren't great, but they're cheap. Thin clients are alive and well if you have the bandwith for it.

[Wowbagger]

Well, I happen to think Windows Azure is an excellent name for Microsoft's cloud computing platform. It's name almost sounds like the word "assure", while simultaneously sounding like a nice color scheme for one's desktop.

And we all know that the better-sounding names of operating systems tend to be Microsoft's best. I mean... look at Windows Vista! Right?!

This might qualify as sarcasm.

[madurobob]

Heh - everyone has been hopping on the Cloud name bandwagon.
Nimbus, Cloudburst, SilverLining, Cumulus, etc...

But, wait until this is a boring consumer offering we're all complaining about. It'll be "the fog" or "smog", or "thick cloud cover limiting visibility" or "40 days of rain" or...

[six7s]

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

And we all know that the better-sounding names of operating systems tend to be Microsoft's best.

True!

[daSkeptic]

Originally Posted by madurobob

Now ... that server is likely a virtual server, one of several virtual servers on a box that scale automatically and may even be mirrored on other boxes.

Again, this concept is not new, only it's attainability by the general public.

[moopet]

Azure... sounds like sure... sounds like, "plays for sure"?

[moopet]

Actually, a thought. I haven't watched that 45-minute video because I'm lazy. I also have not looked up anything since starting this thread.

However, my concern has always been that - for example - Google goes bust in a big Enronian explosion. What happens to your data? You should be keeping backups, either with your own infrastructure or with a third-party cloud backup solution (which solves the problem and doesn't mean discounting cloud apps!) and more importantly what happens to your virtual office?
Say you have a 100-strong team across the world, all using google apps. Then google dies. How long will it take you to convert everyone to some other system and re-upload the documents you backed up? With local apps that's not an issue.
Solutions like google gears help, but how prevalent are they? I've had issues collaborating on google spreadsheets (one client likes to use it as a bug tracking database substitute) where I'll be happily editing away and then suddenly the page will reload a different edit, losing all my changes. This might be uncommon, but it's still teething days for collaborative document management on this scale.

Lastly, persistence of availability of information. Cor, that sounded almost like I knew some buzzwords. I mean, some businesses are constrained to keep copies of documents available for a certain length of time. This made the headlines over the last few years with certain departments saying they couldn't use MS Office because it was a proprietary format and they couldn't rely on having access to it in 10 years (say) whereas with an open format they could. Well, with a cloud-hosted office, where do you stand? If you keep a download open-format version in sync for backup purposes then I suppose you're ok, but that rather begs the question, doesn't it?

[rjh01]

What happens if your local computer gets blown up? At best it would take a few days to get another computer and get everything loaded. That is if you keep real time backups. If not you lose all the data since your last backup. And hope that your backups are any good.

[six7s]

Originally Posted by moopet

However, my concern has always been that - for example - Google goes bust in a big Enronian explosion. What happens to your data?

Hmmm...

www.google.com/apps How secure is your sensitive business data?

Quote:

Why is Google Apps secure?

Google operates one of the largest networks of distributed datacenters in the world, and we go to great lengths to protect the data and intellectual property on these servers. These facilities are protected around the clock and we have a dedicated security operations team who focuses specifically on maintaining the security of our environment. The controls, processes and policies that protect these data have successfully completed a SAS 70 Type II audit. There are three main components to our security practices:

• People – Google employs a full-time information security team including some of the world’s foremost experts in information, application, and network security.

Call me naive... but I have a hunch they might have at least considered the risk of a "big Enronian explosion"... and maybe... just maybe... have a plan to mitigate the risk

[Eddie Dane]

I think it is perfectly possible to make backups of your files on your own hard-drive.
And doing so could probably be automated.

[icerat]

Yes, cloud computing is just the thin client idea. The difference today is broadband - prior to that it was too slow and unstable. Now we're used to always on high speed connections that are beginning to be more reliable than our own PCs.

If Google did suddenly go Enron, the very fact they'd have millions of users wanting their data as fast as possible would make it an extremely attractive takeover target. Did anyone actually have their gas or electricity or whatever turned off when Enron collapsed?

[Andrew Wiggin]

This isn't a new idea, just an old idea that didn't work without internet being revived now that most folks are online. When computers didn't talk to each other, this was much more complex, and failed as a business model as soon as computers became cheap enough for businesses to buy their own.

Here's how it used to work, more or less.

My father was one of National Cash Register's programmers, back in the day. He was responsible for support of a set of programs, run at several data centers, that calculated hospital payroll. The time card data from the subscribing hospital's employees arrived in crates, and went to data entry, where a huge team of 'key punch girls' converted it to punch cards. The punch cards were fed into a reader, and converted into magnetic tape. The tape was processed through the mainframe, which ran an automatic card puncher to generate a crate of output cards. The crate of output, together with a punched paper tape loop that had the check number series data on it, would be sent to printing services, which would print, crate, and ship the checks.

One of the first places I ever worked still used a system like this, and I remember how inconvenient and irritating it was. First, because of the time it took to ship, process, and ship again, they were one pay period behind. That meant that new hires had to wait a month before seeing any income, which I remember as being rather harrowing. Second, we were at the mercy of truck freight. It wasn't uncommon to show up on payday friday and be told 'well, the checks aren't in yet. The truck got delayed. Come back monday.' It was a miracle they never had a riot. Third, any mistakes on your pay stub would take a month to correct. Oddly, they never made a mistake in my favor, but plenty of mistakes in theirs.

A

[icerat]

and today we complain if a website isn't loaded in 3.5 seconds

[moopet]

Originally Posted by six7s

Call me naive... but I have a hunch they might have at least considered the risk of a "big Enronian explosion"... and maybe... just maybe... have a plan to mitigate the risk

Yes, I expect they have. But it's still trust in someone else - and I'm not just talking about me here, I'm trying to second-guess what the man in the street might feel too.

Originally Posted by rjh01

What happens if your local computer gets blown up? At best it would take a few days to get another computer and get everything loaded. That is if you keep real time backups. If not you lose all the data since your last backup. And hope that your backups are any good.

The odds on every one of your offices around the world getting blown up at the same time are...? The concern I'm expressing is about adding another single point of failure.

To be clear, I don't really have these paranoias, but I think they should be at least mentioned. So I can say "I told you so" if it all goes tits up.

[six7s]

Originally Posted by moopet

To be clear, I don't really have these paranoias, but I think they should be at least mentioned. So I can say "I told you so" if it all goes tits up.

Not if... when

Remember... its a binary world:

• There are systems that have gone tits up
• And there are systems that will go tits up

However... this ain't a reason to be afraid of cloud computing

[Morrigan]

Originally Posted by Eddie Dane

Google apps offers a whole package of interesting "cloud" applications.

Theoretically you could run your whole office on Google apps, providing you had a broadband internet connection.

That's what we do here at work, actually. We use Gmail for email and use Google docs to share documents.

Originally Posted by McHrozni

This is the main reason I'll stick to MS Office or whatever else will come by for the foreseeable future. It's not just the Gmail, it is also my ISP, my modem and my network card, all of which can fail. If any of that happens on, say, the evening of a long weekend (for example, thursday, dec 24th) and I need to have them done by monday, it creates an essentially unsolvable problem.

I know the solution isn't perfect, but it's better to rely on as few failable devices as possible, IMHO

Your hard drive can fail. Even if the chances are low, they're probably higher than Google and your ISP (unless your ISP really sucks) remaining unavailable for a long period of time.
Also, nothing stops you from downloading backups from Google Docs if you need to. Plus, Google docs have version control too, which is reaallly nice if you accidentally overwrite data.


(No, I don't work for Google... though at times I kinda wish I did :P)

[six7s]

Originally Posted by Morrigan

(No, I don't work for Google... though at times I kinda wish I did :P)

They're hiring

[Wudang]

If you use Google do you have an Underpinning Contract?

[a_unique_person]

Originally Posted by Eddie Dane

Google apps offers a whole package of interesting "cloud" applications.

I'm guessing you can buy a license if you want to run it on your intranet. Running your own cloud makes sense, and one more nail in Microsofts coffin. (not dead yet, though)

[madurobob]

Originally Posted by a_unique_person

I'm guessing you can buy a license if you want to run it on your intranet. Running your own cloud makes sense, and one more nail in Microsofts coffin. (not dead yet, though)

Hehe - not even close. They made $13B in revenue last quarter and only $2.6B was from consumer OS stuff. They realized long ago - like most SW companies - that the real growth potential was in middleware and B2B, not in consumer end-user applications. In fact, that's the only MS division that grew YtY in their last quarterly report.

But, since the initial impact of cloud computing is in serving up end user apps you can expect MS to be a big player. Their Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc... are the international standard (I work for a competitor, and internally we use the MS products rather than our own). Love them or hate them, everyone knows how to use them by default. And with their OS on so many PCs they can easily establish a SaaS cloud directly accessed from the OS - from which they can serve up all their end user apps for a small pay-as-you-go fee.

Cloud computing - in its initial phases as a way to deliver consumer Apps - will line Microsoft's coffers bigtime.