Welcome!

Cloud Expo Authors: Jeremy Geelan, Helen Ching, Adrian Bridgwater, Pat Romanski, Jim Kaskade

Related Topics: Cloud Expo

Cloud Expo: Article

Opinion: Cloud Computing Makes Me Nervous

Alan Patrick, too, is equally amazed at what people are sleepwalking into

Ian Betteridge's "Technovia" Blog

Maybe it's because I'm old, but cloud computing makes me nervous. I remember the Apple "1984" ad not just because it was a great piece of work by Ridley Scott, but also because of its underlying message. And that message was simple: monolithic computer systems supplied by monolithic suppliers aren't a good idea for individuals.

Cloud computing is a return to the dark ages of the 1960s and 1970s, when all of your most valuable things - your data - sat on a big server somewhere. You accessed it from a simple terminal, but only so long as you paid IBM or whoever to process your data. While you owned the data in theory, in practice you were at the mercy of your supplier.

Alan Patrick, too, has been around the blocks a few times, which is why he is equally amazed at what people are sleepwalking into:

"I've been reading some of the comments on other blogs about this with a mounting sense of wonder at the sheer naivete of some users. For anything that is important: Firstly, always plan for redundancy in your systems - have an online and on computer service that are synched. Secondly, do frequent backups to a 3rd source. Thirdly, if its important, pay for it. Ad funded services are responsive to the advertisers, not to the users - its that pipers / tune thing."

If you use Google Documents exclusively you are taking a serious risk that one day Google will lock you out of your data. I'm not impugning anything about Google here - they may, indeed, plan to "do no evil". But you are relying on their good grace, and that should make you nervous.

Own your own documents - keep them on your hard drive, and on a seperate drive or two as well. Use Google Documents as a backup, not your only storage.


[This post appeared originally here and is republished in full with the kind permission of the author, who retains copyright.]

More Stories By Ian Betteridge

Ian Bettridge blogs at Technovia - a blog on technology, science and culture - and at The Metaverse - a spin-off from Technovia about virtual worlds in all their forms, including Second Life. He's been a journalist and writer for over ten years professionally, mostly working in the field of technology.



Comments (0)

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.


Cloud Expo Breaking News
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what e...
"Having been in the IT field for many years, I believe the cloud computing chapter in the industry is an exciting one and I am proud to be a part of it," said National Reconaissance Office (NRO) Chief Information Officer Jill T. Singer Tuesday, as it was announced that she was one of 10 winners of the 2012 CloudNOW "Top Ten Women in Cloud" Awards.
2011 was a year of rapid adoption for public and private cloud services. Instant and on-demand server provisioning was the driving force behind the massive growth. On top, cloud server templates and script automation simplified application installation for simple and pre-defined application stacks, but have not targeted more complex enterprise application environments. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, John Yung, CEO of Appcara, will discuss how 2012 will be the year for app...
As more enterprises are adopting clouds, the nature of cloud computing is changing. Previously, clouds were used to test applications or for non-mission critical applications. Today, enterprises are using clouds for cost-saving advantages and launching more mission critical applications that have defined performance needs. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Eric Shepcaro, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Telx, will discuss how distributed computing has many advantages. It wou...
Building a cloud computing environment with on-demand access to compute, network, and storage resources requires an elastic infrastructure at multiple levels. Virtualization combined with x86 servers has transformed the way we scale out compute resources. Unfortunately, legacy Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage architectures are rooted in rigid mainframe-era designs, and are fundamentally mismatched with the dynamic, shared modern data center. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, ...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) just four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else h...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what e...
With Big Data Expo 2012 New York (co-located with 10th Cloud Expo) now under four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where ...
With Big Data Expo 2012 New York (co-located with 10th Cloud Expo) just four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
Can you bring services from the cloud to your customers faster and have them adopt it with ease of use or bring the power of bundled services to the fingertips of your clients without creating new rigid ‘apps stove pipes'? Do you want to prevent your business running away to public and unmanageably immature cloud services? In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Hans van de Koppel, Sr. Enterprise Architect at Capgemini, will take Cloud Expo delegates to the developing world of clou...