Talking Points: Cloud Computing
So what is this mysterious Cloud Computing?
Technical friends and articles alike will furnish some clues, but maybe with a tad too much information. So here's one fairly simple explanation gleaned from Wikipedia - Sam Johnston, the author of this diagram, has a gift for clarity.
Basically, the cloud is the whole of the internet. The oval shapes represent the mega-servers run by the big boys of the internet playground. We log our humble PCs into this plethora of good things, and hey presto! the computer power of the universe is available to us.
To be more accurate, we can subscribe through the cloud to a vast number of services, paying relatively small amounts of cash to Amazon Web Services or the like for the facilities and bandwidth we use.
If you were around in the '90s and aware of such things the phrase 'Network Computer' may spring to mind. The difference is that this time round there is a huge network of incredible resources that we can tap into. So, for example, instead of spending a lot of money on software and consultancy to set up a Customer Relationship Management application, you simply use a facility in the cloud and pay as you go.
Benefits: every cloud has a silver lining, and in this case it's the prospect of cheap, scaleable, pay-as-you-go facilities that will be invaluable for any business or organisation. Set up pilot projects at low cost, fire someone in IT that you don't need any more, back up your data to a totally secure site built into a mountain.
Risk: the downside is fairly obvious. To continue with homely metaphors, does this silver lining require us to put all our eggs in one basket? What do you do if all your customer records are held on a virtual server - you know not where - which suddenly becomes unavailable? Suppose one of the key corporations involved in the cloud collapses? We know they are all financially solid, but what about future partners? No one stands up and says 'my company is about to go under'. Remember Lehman Brothers.
Until we have some experience of organisations going bust through loss of data or security lapses, we won't know how likely it is to happen. Best advice seems to be: dabble with the facilities offered by the cloud, but back up locally. All the PCs in the above diagram should perhaps be shown with massive hard drives attached.