Interesting article: Trust the Cloud? Americans Say No Way

Trust the Cloud? Americans Say No Way
Tim Greene, Network World

Saturday, October 24, 2009 10:04 AM PDT

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/174301/trust_the_cloud_americans_say_no_way.html?tk=nl_bax_h_crawl

* Alan Spicer Says: This was an interesting article not only about Cloud Computing and a Survey that tells how Americans feel about it, but also about other security issues both physical (personal as in real persons safety) as well as Online Security.

Many readers may not know exactly what “Cloud Computing” is, it is, after all, kind of “cloudy” to most people. It’s buzz wording or a buzz phrase used by I.T. and/or Marketing People. It not only refers to data stored online, like online hard drive storage services we’ve all heard about (and been offered at various times), and Online Banking - which many of us use for it’s convenience, but also other business and personal applications that run online - and can store our personal data, such as Google Apps. In other words online “Microsoft Office”-like applications such as Word Processing, Spread Sheeting, and more.

So in some instances… Online Banking… Email… Online Purchasing… we could already be using some forms of Cloud Computing and not even realize it. We may have more data online than we’d like to believe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

Says: Cloud computing is the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources as a service over the Internet on a utility basis.[1][2] Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.[3] Cloud computing services often provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on how the Internet is depicted in computer network diagrams and is an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it conceals.[4]

A technical definition is “a computing capability that provides an abstraction between the computing resource and its underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”[5] This definition states that clouds have five essential characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service.[5]

* In other words, in a network drawing, you draw YOU (your computer and Internet Modem or Customer Premises Equipment [CPE]) connecting to a big wispy white ”Cloud”. On another side of the “Cloud” you might draw your Bank’s Secure Web Site, where you do online banking. Most people don’t know, don’t care, how their transactions get from their Web Browser - Across the Internet - Into the Bank’s Web Servers - and what happens inbetween all of that. That’s pretty “cloudy”. If it doesn’t work, most people have no idea where to start to figure out why it would not work. I make a living and a business out of mostly being able to figure out those kinds of things.

Of course you know… there are Public Clouds and Private Clouds. In other words you can have your own private cloud computing resources and storage. For example if you run your own external hard drive, or Server [web or Microsoft or Linux…?], or even in some Appliances used for networking and multimedia there are Web Servers and such. It’s still in a cloud. It might local to your network (and thus safer?) For example many routers used for Internet Access have a web page. Sometimes my customers get confused, e.g. using an Ericsson W35, or a WiFi Access System - as to what this web page thing is? Well, it comes from the router box that you are using. It is running a mini web server and allowing you to check on, use, and configure that router box. It’s a Management Web Interface for that connection that you are using. And it’s in your “Local Cloud”, in other words it’s just on your local network - not on the Internet. 

* There are several problems I see with Cloud Computing:

1.) Internet Connection is required. What if it slows down? Or goes down? And what if we are not always connected? It assumes that you would always have access to your data and applications - but for my mobile (marine) traveling customers there may be varuous sized “chunks of time” (sometimes days, weeks) where that data and applications would not be available due to lack of Internet connectivity.

2.) Security concerns - as brought out in this article. Many people may not want to trust someone else (or a company) to have access to and hold their data. There are many cases where companies or government agencies, either online, or offline (e.g. laptops, hard drives, removeable media) - have lost their constituents or clients personal data. And on the higher end I can’t imagine, for example, Microsoft - wanting a competitor to be storing it’s financial or other strategic data. Most private citizens wouldn’t want their personal data, pictures, family information, etc. to be available to others to do with what they want.

3.) Failure of the company or organization storing the data and applications - Financial or Business Failure, or just Computer or Network Infrastructure Failure. If they go down - your data goes down with them. Grant it Google probably has tons of redundancy and isn’t likely to Go Down, but others might - for various reasons.

* So should you use any kind of Cloud Computing? Online Storage? Internet Banking? YES and NO. I say it depends on what you are storing online and who is doing the storing. You’d want a reliable company that you have reason to believe you can trust. Google would be a good example. Your bank usually would be a good one as well. Aside from that I would tread lightly as well. I personally like to keep a lot of my personal “stuff” on my own personal computers. The same with my customer data. I also like to have raw CPU “computing power” at my fingertips on my local machine. And I don’t necessarily like Netbook or Netdesk computing. Because I don’t like having “chopped off”, “stripped down” computer equipment. At todays prices I’d rather get a good price and pay a few dollars more for better local computing power at My Location, wherever that might be.

* The article, in part, says:

Americans don’t trust cloud storage for their confidential data, with identity theft ranking as their top security concern, according to a twice-yearly survey by network security consulting firm Unisys.

FAQ: Cloud computing, demystified

Asked what they felt about personal data being stored on third-parties’ remote computers, 64% say they don’t want their data kept by a third party,

(you can read more at the link above…)

* To look at it another way… that survey might be a moot point (?) Because we won’t be the ones controlling when or where cloud computing gets done. This, because, the companies that we use for products and services will be the ones using Cloud Computing - and we won’t even have a choice. (Who’s ad says this: We don’t make a lot of the products you buy, we make a lot of the products you buy Better.)

See: http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2009/ndc3/051809-cloud-faq.html

FAQ: Cloud computing, demystified
What is cloud computing, and can it be trusted? Key questions answered

Everyone in the IT industry is talking about cloud computing, but there is still confusion about what the cloud is, how it should be used and what problems and challenges it might introduce. This FAQ will answer some of the key questions enterprises are asking about cloud computing.

 What is cloud computing?

Gartner defines cloud computing as “a style of computing in which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ using Internet technologies to multiple external customers.” Beyond the Gartner definition, clouds are marked by self-service interfaces that let customers acquire resources at any time and get rid of them the instant they are no longer needed.

The cloud is not really a technology by itself. Rather, it is an approach to building IT services that harnesses the rapidly increasing horsepower of servers as well as virtualization technologies that combine many servers into large computing pools and divide single servers into multiple virtual machines that can be spun up and powered down at will.

How is cloud computing different from utility, on-demand and grid computing?

Cloud by its nature is “on-demand” and includes attributes previously associated with utility and grid models. Grid computing is the ability to harness large collections of independent compute resources to perform large tasks, and utility is metered consumption of IT services, says Kristof Kloeckner, the cloud computing software chief at IBM. The coming together of these attributes is making the cloud today’s most “exciting IT delivery paradigm,” he says.

Fundamentally, the phrase cloud computing is interchangeable with utility computing, says Nicholas Carr, author of “The Big Switch” and “Does IT Matter?” The word “cloud” doesn’t really communicate what cloud computing is, while the word “utility” at least offers a real-worth analogy, he says. “However you want to deal with the semantics, I think grid computing, utility computing and cloud computing are all part of the same trend,” Carr says.

Carr is not alone in thinking cloud is not the best word to describe today’s transition to Web-based IT delivery models. For the enterprise, cloud computing might best be viewed as a series of “online business services,” says IDC analyst Frank Gens.

What is a public cloud?

Naturally, a public cloud is a service that anyone can tap into with a network connection and a credit card. “Public clouds are shared infrastructures with pay-as-you-go economics,” explains Forrester analyst James Staten in an April report. “Public clouds are easily accessible, multitenant virtualized infrastructures that are managed via a self-service portal.”

What is a private cloud?

A private cloud attempts to mimic the delivery models of public cloud vendors but does so entirely within the firewall for the benefit of an enterprise’s users. A private cloud would be highly virtualized, stringing together mass quantities of IT infrastructure into one or a few easily managed logical resource pools.

(More at the link above from Network World.)

—

Alan Spicer Telecom / Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

(will be in the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show - but just walking around. Might have something interesting to show yachting visitors!)

+1 954-683-3426

Email: communications (at) marinetelecom.net

“Do you need things in your yacht Communications Set Up to be made Uncloudy?”

“Is it cloudy or foggy as to how to use your Internet and Voice Communications Systems?”

*Let me CLEAR that up for your…

This entry was posted on 28. October 2009 at 00:18 and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.