“The Cloud” from an internet perspective is a relatively new word in most people’s vocabulary, even though you might have been using the cloud for years without calling it that, e.g. because you’ve had a Yahoo or Hotmail or Gmail account.
In a nutshell, the cloud is just about storing data and/or using software that is physically (well, electronically) stored somewhere else other than your own computer inside your home or office. Generally speaking, if you don’t have an internet connection, then you can’t get to that data and/or use that software. Which of course makes a good, fast (enough) internet connection very essential!
Here’s our friend Wikipedia on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
Do you trust the cloud? What if your internet connection goes down for an extended period? What if the cloud service provider screws up and loses your data? What are the legal/privacy issues?
Here’s Itomic’s perspective and experiences on the above questions, with specific reference to our adoption – and yes “reliance” – on Google to store much of our company data and provide services such as email, calendar, data storage, etc.
- So many business worldwide are now critically dependent on Google Apps and/or similar cloud offerings. So if something bad happened (e.g. permanent data loss), you’d be in very good company. On a closely related topic: a year or so ago we read somewhere that, in a survey of business owners, only 3% believed they could continue trading for any length of time without an Internet connection. That’s probably 2% or 1% today, and falling.
- The pressure on Google and the like to NOT have something very bad happen is immense. The potential fallout for something very bad happening would be huge. We’d like to imagine this helps to keep them focused and motivated.
- If I’m going to use the cloud, I’d sooner trust a massive company making millions or even billions of dollars profit per month to have the resources, people, technology, backups, etc. to ensure that nothing bad happens, than a relatively minor company.
- Can we guarantee something bad won’t ever happen to your cloud services? Of course not. But neither can we guarantee that something bad won’t happen if you stay out of the cloud, instead relying on your own personal computer systems and backup systems (preferably offsite) that you might, or might not, have in place. Do you regularly (weekly? monthly?) backup all the important files on your PC and store it in an offsite location? If you do – great! But how much time and effort does this take you, and how confident are you that – if you needed to restore files from your backups – it would work? If you’re not doing this, then we can tell you now that you’re massively more exposed to major loss (e.g. fire, theft, etc.) than if you were using the cloud instead. When Itomic data and systems were primarily managed from within our own offices, our IT costs were exponentially higher – both the cost of the hardware, software, etc, plus the cost of skilled tech staff – in-house and 3rd party – to help us look after it all.
- For extra peace of mind you can organise automated backups from the cloud (e.g. of your Google Apps account) very cheaply. E,g, SysCloudSoft ($1/user/year) or Backupify ($3/user/month). We can’t vouch for these personally, but they are both 5/5 star rated in the Google Apps Marketplace. There are options to backup to your own local hard drive, and/or to backup to another cloud service that is fully independent of Google systems.
- Legal issue: yes, some people are twitchy about the US Patriot Act: http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Patriot_Act. We’re not personally aware of any Aussie company that has been negatively affected by this. It would be a huge public relations disaster for doing business with/in the US if this Act were ever to be used in a way that was seen to be a threat to doing normal day-to-day business.
Try to avoid using the cloud if:
- You’re a massive conspiracy theorist and want to stay “off the grid” as much as possible.
- You’re involved in extremely dodgy dealings.
For the rest of us – enjoy!