The Cloud is certainly hanging over us. Most of the articles I read, talk about the Cloud’s amazing silver linings. The marketplace is certainly doing its best to sing the praises of the tremendous benefits that rain from the Cloud. There certainly are benefits. I also see lots of reasons to bring along my umbrella. Sometimes the rain just leaves you soggy and smelly. Just ask your dog.
When is being in the Cloud not so heavenly? The last of a four part series…
How about a conclusion?
Some of these stories are not recent. The problem is that they are still relevant. I’m concerned equally about my confidential business data and personal identity theft. Just ask CEO Todd Davis at LifeLock.
The situation is this: I personally am not the target anymore, and neither are you. It’s not the waiter at the restaurant stealing the carbon from your credit card slip, if you even remember that ever happening. It’s the hacker in China, Eastern Europe or the Middle East conducting tech jihad against your Cloud provider.
My single laptop, or even my whole office of 11 computers is a far smaller and safer place for my sensitive data to reside. Really, we don’t have anything worth stealing in comparison to what our Cloud service provider has on their servers.
Beyond safety concerns, the software companies are using the Cloud to reduce dependence on retailers. Cutting out the retailers allows them to absorb and keep that additional percentage, not that there is anything wrong with that.
The problem for me is the double or quintuple dip at the consumer’s expense. Not only are they taking the distribution piece of the pie, but some are absolutely gouging us as businesses or consumers, if we choose them. They aren’t using their growth to benefit the consumer. Reducing distribution fees should allow companies to lower the cost to consumers and small businesses while increasing their profits. It’s a free world. They can run their business any way they want. We can all choose what we buy and don’t buy.
In most cases, you simply don’t need to be in the Cloud. At this point, most of what’s out there is hype. After the last several years of fallout from our government and some of our biggest corporations, I’m just not interested in having the Cloud rammed down my throat. I’m a business owner myself. I have no problem with creating a profit by serving my audience with beneficial products and services. The problem here is that second part. I like the Cloud, though you probably wouldn’t think so from these articles. It can fun, and sometimes even useful, it’s just NOT the second coming of the Internet.
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Did you miss one in the series?
When Being in the Cloud Isn’t Heavenly…
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
I would love for you to leave a comment below.
All good stuff. The cloud is mostly just hype.
However, in our case we could not exist without it. When tickets go on sale for large events we can automatically scale servers to accomodate the traffic.
This is really why the cloud is there. Companies that use the cloud can make sure user applications are always(mostly) available.
Data loss, hacking and security is no different in or out of the cloud.
With the cloud my cost are about $30 per day. Without the cloud my cost would $500.00 per day.
Gary
Love the Cloud for what you are doing Gary. You’ve gotta be security conscious to the Nth degree already, and the scaleability is obviously critical. 🙂
Just finished part 4. Decided to read them all in one sitting. I appreciate the brevity of them. The cloud? I know that’s where everything that be digitized is going. For me specifically, as an aspiring filmmaker, I like to follow what’s going on with UltraViolet and the studios, etc….
The more accessible data become, and the easier it becomes to store, the less it becomes worth to the market. Ease of access = lower value. Difficult access = higher value. So then in film we have this dilemma: Big names and big marketing budgets trump content most of the time (how many great films have you never heard of?).
But if the cloud and all things associated with it can get films to more people without having to go through traditional distribution channels, at what point will the ease of access to film begin to trump the bankability of stars and the marketing budgets of studios as determining factors of what films we pay to see? I don’t know if it ever will, but it’s just a thought.
Without high priced casts and huge marketing budgets to make that money back, profitability comes much sooner. And if the story is good, and people can access it whenever and however for a few bucks, I think they will, but not if they’re saving their $10 to go see John Carter this weekend…….haha
Robert – That’s certainly part of the big balancing act going on in all the entertainment industries. The love the lower costs, but then additional folks are inserting themselves into the mix and fragmenting communication and distribution. For a non-cloud example, I’m happy to get most of my movie watching done on my large flat screen at home with a DVD from Redbox for a buck, having chosen to sink the funds into my screen not the Big Screen as much, though I’ll hit the theatre to drop my Costco $7-8 prepaid movie ticket on John Carter this weekend.
Great and helpful articles.
Hope they truly go viral.
Best regards, Bob Bennett
The cloud is great for some things, but for hosting sites, it is still a work in progress…at least that has been when we have been discovering. We are moving a site this week from a cloud based server to a regular server due to reliability issues…apps not loading, older versions of the site being served, stuff like that. It could be the host, but that brings up a whole other issue. Try to find a rock solid could based host out there for DotNetNuke. It isn’t easy, a lot of promises but few results. In months and years to come, the cloud will be solid and great, but right now, still in the infancy of things related to hosting a site. That comes from real world experience, not an opinion.
That’s huge Bryan – experience trumps theory every time. 🙂
Never trust an ELECTRONIC server farm exclusively. It’s like having important computer records without back-up. Tornados, power outages (past the time their back-ups can cover), EMPs, earthquakes – stuff happens.
Here’s some thoughts, I’ll try to be brief, not my strong suit. I think the most obvious things are the obvious things. Look how easy it was for you to identify and experience problems, and then apply a little logic and see that it is nothing but marketing. That should be easy for anyone to see if they look past the whitewash paint job. Calling it “Cloud” and wrapping it in cute app names doesn’t change the function. It’s network based programming and it’s been around for a long time. But when you say “mainframe” and “workstation” it doesn’t sell very well. It works when used for it’s intended purpose and limiting the range is one of the necessary components. We have had it for a long time in the design world as a way to have a common database of repetitive designs and common customers. But size kills! Memory and band width were the biggest problem for years, and that has changed a lot, but it’s still not gone. Simple fact is, you put that many sheep in one pen, you better have a good shepherd. More shepherds are better. That’s why every time at every job I’ve had where it has been implemented, the size and range have had to be limited. It works within a facility, or possibly a region, but not nationally or globally. It’s just too big.
I refer to my geek background and the power of good sci-fi writing. In the update of Battlestar Galactica, one of the chief defenses that the humans used against the Cylons was NOT networking their computers. Of course, the enemy insiders were pushing for networking. Don’t use that as a comparison, you’ll be laughed at. I’m a geek, I’m used to it. ;-D
My 2 cents!
BP