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Aug02Conservatism and Cloud ComputingCloud Computing, General2 Comments »
I don’t talk politics in this blog (and have other outlets to vent my feelings) but I can’t help in this case. Conservatives pull back any attempts to push the envelope while dealing with social issues by inculcating fear in the minds of people. That is what is happening with regards to cloud computing too. Those companies whose business interests are threatened by cloud computing and those in media who are wedded to these companies and their technology, are unleashing a wave of fear about cloud computing. The traditionalists in the software world take an upcoming promising technology that is still in its infancy and use fear tactics to seed confusion in the minds of users. We saw a security meme in the blogosphere that cast a huge shadow of vulnerability on the very concept of cloud computing. Then, with the release of Kaminsky’s DNS exploit in the wild, people are talking about how it exposes the inherent security risks in the cloud computing world. If you are someone who is bitten by this fear bug, I want to point out that all these vulnerabilities they point out (and even more) exist in the current world of online services and traditional software too. We saw similar wave of fear when email was gaining traction. The threats of spam and phishing still exists but we are not going back to using snail mail. The scenario is similar in the case of cloud computing. There are threats to cloud computing and I am not denying it. But if you do the risk benefit analysis, the advantage of cloud computing outweighs the threat factor. Also, the scenario is similar to what happened when we changed from person to person direct talking to telephonic conversations. It is same as what happened when we changed from snail mail to email. The threats shouldn’t force us to shut down cloud computing. If we do it, then the threat wins. Instead, we should take on the threats to cloud computing head on and try to minimize the impact. We should focus on developing better cloud technologies that eliminate these threats. More than anything else, we should realize that all these security threats (pointed out in the cloud security meme and talk about how Kaminsky exploit can affect cloud computing) exists in the case of traditional software services and in the current day data center based traditional web hosting approaches. Let us look forward than look backwards due to the wave of fear unleashed by traditionalists.
Jul15Cloud Computing and EnterpriseCloud ComputingNo Comments »
The folks at Whir TV talked to James Staten of Forrester Research the cloud computing and how it fits into enterprise. You can watch the video below.
May20Google Health: Some observationsCloud Computing, Health Care, Security3 Comments »Googlelaunched Google Health yesterday, a way to store your health records in the computing cloud. I have no problems in putting my health records in the cloud. My insurance company has access to my health records already. If they can have it, I will have no problem with Google storing it on their clouds. Having made my beliefs with respect to storing my health care records on the computing cloud clear, I would like to add my initial observations of Google health. I may write a detailed review at a later stage but these are just some of my initial observations.
These are my initial observations on Google Health. I haven’t explored it deeply as yet. I understand that the service is still in beta and I hope they add more features in the future. Online health records are important. The complete control of the records should be given to the users. The security and privacy of the records should be given the utmost attention. Google has taken the necessary first step, along with Microsoft and many other startups. We have to wait and see how it is going to benefit the customer. I wouldn’t come to a conclusion about the merits of this service at such an early stage.
May16How is SaaS different from ASP of the past?Cloud Computing2 Comments »
As cloud computing grows and matures, there are many vendors who venture into Software as a Service model (SaaS) targeting small and medium businesses. Recently, I was talking to a CEO of a small firm from across the world and he asked me the difference between SaaS and ASP (Application Service Providers) of the previous decade. I thought I will write a post here explaining the difference in case if others have similar questions as well. For those of you who came here with an expectation to see posts related to Open Web, I would like to point out that Cloud Computing is also part of the open web and this post highlights the importance of SaaS models built on the cloud. Since cloud computing and the business based on clouds is of interest to me, I will post some posts on these topics too.
SaaS and ASP have a somewhat similar philosophy but there are many differences that makes SaaS more competent in the marketplace than the ASP in the previous era. Lemme, explain the differences in this post.
There are various other advantages of SaaS over ASP. I am just pointing out to some of the advantages that are important according to many industry analysts (including me :-)).
PS: The basic structure of this article is based on one of the old articles on the topic by Julie Craig in one of the Internet.com reports. I added my ideas about cloud computing and open source to that structure.
Apr21Some concerns about cloud computingCloud ComputingNo Comments »
Craig Balding raises the following issues related to security cloud computing. Since some of the issues concern to the theme of this blog, opensource, open standards and open web, I thought I will link the concerns here. Some of the issues highlight the need to have a cloud computing infrastructure without any proprietary software infrastructure.
Multiple cloud storage providers for a single app, raises some issues.
* Is ISV obligated to tell you they are migrating to a cheaper cloud storage provider? (think cross border data transfer issues).
* What security ‘certification’ will take place of the new provider and what visibility will you have of that?
* How much notification do you get before the switchover?
* If you don’t want to go with the new provider, but that is the only supported option, what happens to all your data? Even if we *assume* an export function is provided you still need to find an alternate ISV that has coded a compatibility layer to access your existing data. If you can’t, where do you export the data too? Will we have ‘frozen clouds‘?
* What integrity checks take place to ensure data was properly migrated over?
* When the migration happens, what clean-up happens at the source? (can anyone say forensic wiping?). What about any backup tapes or off-line copies? Who is responsible for making sure those are wiped/destroyed?
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