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Is Cloud Computing the Hotel California of Tech?
Prolific blogger and open source enthusiast Matt Asay ponders whether cloud computing may be the Hotel California of tech. It seems that data repositories in the form of Googles and Facebooks are very easy to dump data into, but can be quite difficult to move data between. "I say this because even for companies, like Google, that articulate open-data policies, the cloud is still largely a one-way road into Web services, with closed data networks making it difficult to impossible to move data into competing services. Ever tried getting your Facebook data into, say, MySpace? Good luck with that. Social networks aren't very social with one other, as recently noted on the Atonomo.us mailing list. For the freedom-inclined among us, this is cause for concern. For the capitalists, it's just like Software 1.0 all over again, with fat profits waiting to be had. The great irony, of course, is that it's all built with open source."
As I understand it, cloud computing can be a cloud application, like google. Or you can actually run your own servers in the cloud, to which you would have complete control of the data and could dump it at will.
Of course using Software as a Service will lock you in... even if there aren't nefarious reasons behind it. But if your going to provision several cloud server instances, load Redhat on them, and put everything in mysql... then your free to do what you will with your data.
Software as a Service Cloud Computing. If anything SAS is just a small segment of the Cloud Computing movement.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Or even just keeping a copy of your own data on your own system.
Thats why I don't call it "cloud computing", I prefer OPS (other peoples servers). Its more self-explanitory.
What you can use the cloud for is to have a few truecrypt volumes stored there as a backup in case you ever need them.
If someone gets at your volume they won't be any wiser.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Why? What could be a better phrase to describe something entirely clouded, than "cloud"? Keep the term and contrast it to "clear sky computing" where no clouds hide the sun (i.e. the data).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Uh, yeah.. maybe your data wants to be free, but my data is staying right the hell on my computer, where it belongs.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
What it really comes down to is market demand vs supply. Let's not frame the discussion about whether or not XYZ is an "asshole" because they don't offer customers what they want. Let's not ask whether the government should mandate such things. Not all problems can be answered by the "Free Market", but this is one problem which *can be*. At some point, whether it's Google or someone else, someone will see a market opportunity - a way to make customers happier, and hopefully more loyal, by giving them something people seem to want - the security of knowing they are not "locked in" to your service.
Once a critical-mass of web services *offer* their customers that 'feature', it is likely that their competitors will need to follow suit in order to not lose too many prospective new customers. If I'm already locked in to your service, it might be hard for me to move, but if I know that another, comparable service exists, which I know makes it easier for me to make local backups, and to move my data to other providers, I as a consumer have at least some motivation to go with the provider who isn't trying to lock me in. That is to say, if I'm looking for *new* service, and am not already locked in, if I think I can avoid lockin with one of your competitors, that will at least be one factor in my decisions (even if it's not to begin with, the marketing department of the competitor can bring it to my attention and try to sell me on that idea).
There's nothing like keeping your own data on your own system..
Or burying your own money in your own yard.
It's just like file formats. They used to provide the capability to store certain data that can be read back and used. Now file formats are only editable by certain applications and cannot be interpreted by others so they cannot be converted. Applications that have perfect support for these formats place restrictions on how they can be manipulated. So in the end, the user cannot do what they want with their data, on the web, but on the desktop too.
Twinstiq, game news
Your already at the mercy of the air conditioning vendor, fire suppression vendor, electricity, internet, etc...
And if a hardware failure occurs, you are at the mercy of whatever support contract (1 hr, 4 hr, whatever.). And just like a remote vendor, you are at the mercy of your other vendors if they go out of business. I worked for a hospital with all Alpha VMS servers. Compaq bought them and phased vms out. Not much I could do about that either. Being remote doesn't make you any more or less in control.
But like you, our institution is largely hosted in house. Hundreds of servers. I think over time, we'll see many of our more standardized services being remotely hosted though. A webserver with static public content for instance. Or a mysql server being used as a backend to a company confluence wiki, etc..
What will tend to stay in house, is sensitive data, until such time as remote hosting vendors become legally obligated to protect the data. We can contract with some of them to establish trust chains, and consequences, etc.. but we've all witnessed remote host screw ups with literal or no consequences. Take gmail mixing up all those email accounts.
Until CEO/CIO's are confident that the data will be well protected, and that said vendor can be locked into privacy contracts, and that the vendor will take the fall if the data gets out... until then, most private data is going to stay on location.