Amidst the deafening clamor, drum beatings and George Ellison's battle shrieks, white collar drones, business managers and professionals may be forgiven for thinking that cloud computing will be the savior and liberator of mankind against the oppressive regime of their company's IT priesthood. Far from being a 'revolutionary technology' and the harbinger of transformational change it is touted to be, cloud computing is actually an evolution from the current client-server and utility computing model.

Fundamentally, cloud computing offers:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
It provides clients the opportunity to reduce their initial and cyclical infrastructural investment. In other words, you don't need to mortgage your wife (and the kids, depending on what deal you're getting) to start off your two-man printing company. A basic monthly subscription from as low as $10 a month (plus another 50 cents for storage) will get you started nicely.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
As the majority of the servers, storage and hardware are located off-site, it can potentially reduce the size of the client's in-house IT support workforce. Meaning, that two-man company you have won't need an eight man strong IT department.


• Software as a Service (SaaS)
It changes the way you procure and manage operating systems, programs and applications. Rather than purchase, maintain, update and secure the licenses of these software, you access them when you need to and pay as you use. So, you can let your grandma go - that $10 monthly subscription you sign up for will cover that too.

• Theoretically Unlimited Scalability
Grow, grow and grow without worrying whether your IT infrastructure can handle your business expansion. Just like your gas company, you won't have to fork anything out when they're building a new pipeline through the Midwest. Cloud computing providers factor in software and hardware upgrades, multiple server deployments, load balancing, storage build-ups and bandwidth spread before they charge you that $10 monthly subscription.

• Improved Reliability
As cloud computing is essentially a cluster of servers, failure in one server simply means another in the cluster will pick up the load and your database will be retrieved from another cloud hosting service. This redundancy protocol mitigates and attenuates any probability of server downtime you may experience.

• Anywhere, Anytime
Befitting the modern corporate warrior that you are, cloud computing enables you to conduct your business from anywhere you might be in the world. With just a browser, you're ready to go - with access to all your database, apps and raw number crunching power at your fingertips.

With all these fantastic advantages, what could possibly stop you from rushing out right now and signing up with one of the many cloud computing service providers out there?

Two things actually

For a start, subscribing to a cloud computing service will entail storing your data and your client's data to a location outside your company. Notwithstanding the fact that you are ceding control of the security these data to your service provider, you will not be privy to the methodology employed in their security management. As in the who, where, how, why and what.

As of now, there is no independent entity that provides an oversight and auditing service to these service providers. Hypothetically, your database might be located in a server room in Papua New Guinea, managed by 300 PhD holders (distance learning), being paid $3 a year (fringe benefits applies: a pair of Air Jordan's from the neighboring Nike plant). That should keep you awake at night.

In addition, despite all the fail-safe, redundancies and backup solutions offered, there is still one element that is yet to be addressed: connectivity. As simple as it gets. Yet, a failure at either end, provider or client, to connect to the internet will result in immediate downtime on a level proportionate to the client's exposure.

Until these two issues are resolved to a satisfactory conclusion, for all the amazing potential that cloud computing has to offer, it will not be embraced by the masses as yet. Nevertheless, make no mistake about it - all roads will lead to cloud computing, eventually.

 

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