Partly Cloudy

Is Cloud Computing a good fit for your organization from a Disaster Recovery standpoint? Can you trust cloud-based services to provide reliable data protection? Will the services you purchase be secure?

The answer to these questions will determine how pervasive Cloud technology becomes in the data management/data protection space. A number of our customers have launched cloud-based projects. Most tell me that the initiatives are driven by a need to reduce complexity and cost. Before we examine the future of The Cloud let’s use the always reliable Wikipedia to define Cloud Computing:

“Cloud computing is internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand.”  -  Wikipedia.

So, the footprint on the local device should be smaller and users should have network access to their software and information. That introduces a serious risk – endpoint protection. If a user can access information from many different devices we need to be sure that the devices are secure. It’s not enough to secure the network. We have ample evidence that two-factor authentication and other network security schemes can be breached. You could invest in biometric security systems, but that’s more Sci-Fi than real on any kind of scale that makes sense for Cloud Computing.

The concept of shared resources is critical to the acceptance of cloud-based services. It’s what drives the cost down. The question from a data management/data protection standpoint is – how are resources being shared. If a software package is corrupted at the source, will this impact all customers, some customers or will it lead to a disruption in service? Again, we have ample evidence to support the fact that at minimum there will be a disruption in service. At that point, your company or government agency is in disaster recovery mode.

We know that disaster recovery is a tricky business for a single entity. Can we rely on a Cloud Computing vendor to recover data for hundreds or thousands of customers? I understand why a firm might want to move their email services or word and spreadsheet applications to The Cloud. It’s a good fit for the technology. Thanks to vendors such as Citrix and Google, we know it can be done. The questions is, can we manage and protect the data. At this stage in the maturity of Cloud Computing, I think the answer is partly cloudy.

Postscript: in hindsight there are lots of “visionaries” in the technology field taking credit for the discovery of Cloud Computing. I want to mention two people who were talking about the possibilities long, loud and early. Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems said that “the network is the computer” in the late 1980’s. The former CEO of Veritas (now part of Symantec), Gary Bloom, touted a “utility computing strategy” in 2001 that was miles ahead of competitors. These two and many others are true pioneers in Cloud Computing.