Clouds

Everything is heading into the cloud...

Cloud computing is all the rage these days, but what does that term even mean? While many people think that it is the hip new thing, it has actually been with us for many years. At its most basic, cloud computing is computing where the data and applications used reside on a remote server. By that definition, even web based email is cloud computing. Doesn’t sound quite so new or cool anymore, does it?

While cloud computing might not be new, it is still a cool concept. It allows both individuals and businesses to simplify their lives and reduce costs by reducing the need to incur the hardware, software and tech support costs for maintaining certain products and services themselves. By using applications that are hosted over the web, individuals and businesses don’t have to worry about purchasing software licenses, doing software installs, configuring settings, doing upgrades and handling issues with their software. They also don’t have to worry about what happens if their computers or hard drives fail.

Those are all tremendous benefits for those who either don’t have the budget, time, desire or ability to maintain the software needed to get their work done using software installed on their own computers. And the variety of software available in the cloud is amazing these days. Nearly anything you want to do can be done through the cloud. What do you need to do? Email? Office applications? Project management? Project collaboration? Data backups and storage? Sales force automation? Customer relationship management? All of those are available and so many more.

With all of those applications available through the cloud and for much less expense than self hosting, why doesn’t everyone move everything to the cloud? Well, like everything, there are tradeoffs and some of them are quite important, especially for businesses.

Availability: Sometimes services are down and the data is unavailable. Just ask Gmail and Blackberry users what it’s like when they can’t access their email. Of course, if you host services yourself, your services can go down as well, so this fear isn’t enough of a reason to torpedo cloud computing. Unless the service you’re interested in is down frequently.

Data loss: If you pay for a cloud based service, you probably won’t have to worry about data loss. The company you do business with will probably have backups of your data. Free services often don’t, though. So, check with the service provider you intend to use to see if you are comfortable with how often they back up your data and how quickly they guarantee to restore your data in the case of a data loss.

Privacy & Security: How safe is your data in the cloud? If you store confidential information, you might want to think twice. Does the service you use provide a secure means of storing data? Do they encrypt files or not? These are important questions to ask, especially if you intend to store sensitive data. If you think your data is safe because you use a large company like Google, that’s not always the case. Cloud computing is still in it’s formative stages and there have been issues from time to time.

Some of these breaches, such as the one at Twitter in 2009 that exposed sensitive information, were caused by poor password management by users. That is also an issue. If you’re a company, you are only as secure as your least secure user. If you can’t trust your employees to use appropriate security on the cloud, you might be safer keeping your data off the cloud entirely.

I’m not trying to scare anyone away from utilizing cloud computing. I use it for many purposes myself, but only when appropriate. Cloud computing can be a powerful tool and it is definitely revolutionizing business as we know it, but that doesn’t mean that you have to use it. If you are interested though, see if it fits the needs of your business. If it does, great. Maybe it will make you more productive and save you money. Just don’t fly into the cloud without knowing the risks first.

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