Should we trust the clouds?
Very interesting topic for discussion about the next “big” thing……cloud computing.
However, many people still have reservations about moving mission-critical systems and data (or control of data) to outside cloud providers.
Data Ownership. “The problem is the EULA normally give IP and ownership rights to the cloud vendor, not the enterprise. So keeping trade secrets on the cloud is a no no and pretty much anything other data you might want to keep secure and secret. The solutions put forth so far are “Build your own data center for storing trade secrets and sensitive information.” Hmm. If have have already incurred the cost of a data center, why not use it for my business???”
Technical Support. “As soon as an enterprise can’t use Excel and Powerpoint because a network server at Microsoft is down and you lose a big deal, the enterprise will start to value a service that is up 95% and has a support structure that meets the enterprises schedule not the vendors schedule.”
Exit Strategy. “No matter how big the play they can still go out of business. If you are an enterprise dependent on a vendor to supply your software, or storage over the internet and the cloud vendor goes out of business, what do you do? Xdrive was a storage company that offered cloud storage. They went out of business and only gave their users 48 hours to save data to another place. For an enterprise, this can’t be exceptable risk.”
Long-Term Data Storage and Accessibility. “If you are fortunate enough to get a cloud vendor to stay in business longer than 4 years you might have 6 year old documents stored with them. Can you still read the documents? Can you still open them up? If you keep tax records on the cloud you might need them as much as 5 years. What happens when the file format is no longer supported or there isn’t a file reader that can open the file any longer? Will the U.S. Taxation Office give your enterprise a pass on paying taxes because of technical difficulties or will your enterprise have to pay huge fines?”
Joe McKendrick highlights some “devil’s advocate’ arguments. There are some careful considerations for mission critical appications stakeholders.