TechBlog

Cloud computing is getting a mixed press these days – vendors are singing its praises, critics are pouncing on its failings.  Google had a two hour outage of Gmail earlier in the week caused by some routine maintenance going wrong, which they admitted was a “Big Deal”.  With Google increasingly looking to sell its Google Apps and Gmail to businesses, you can see why.  Since these services are in “the cloud”, i.e. hosted and delivered via the Internet, the benefits are that you don’t need to buy and administer hardware and software yourself – you just buy the service in the way you buy your utilities (so the sales patter goes).  However, the downside is that you’re wholly reliant on the supplier providing the service reliably.   The key advantage of the Cloud is scalability – if your demands suddenly increase by 1000%, the cloud should be able to cope with that, where your own servers may not.  As your requirements expand or contract, the Cloud means you only pay for what you use.

Cloud Computing does seem to be suffering from an excess of hype, backed up by the recently published Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies: Cloud Computing is sitting right at the top of the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”, with an estimated 2-5 years before mainstream adoption.  My view would be that  Cloud Computing has its place, but is not the panacea it’s being hyped as. 

Some things that you need to consider when looking at the cloud might be:

• where is the data held? – if it’s outside the EU and not a Safe Harbour country that could be a DP problem
• what is the SLA? - you might get a refund of some of the fee paid if the service is unavailable for 4 hours, but that may only be a few hundred pounds – will that compensate you for loss of service/business?
• is the data centre the supplier’s own or a third party’s?
• can you visit the data centre to confirm the supplier’s assertions as to security etc.?
• how is the data held?  Is it encrypted at the disk level?  What access do the supplier’s staff have to it?

The key with Cloud Computing is, unsurprisingly, to know what you’re getting and be able to manage any risks.