Walking in the Clouds – A Case For and Against Cloud Computing for Business

Cloud Computing – Since the internet first began picking up popularity (thanks to access systems like Compuserve, AOL and other earlier bulletin board services) we have periodically experienced massive shifts in how we use the internet.  Newly developed technologies like cloud computing have by far outgrown our ability to socially or lawfully manage them.

Currently we are embarking onto two new Internet paradigms…Social Networking and Cloud Computing.  These shifts are testing our ability to manage both our businesses and personal lives.  These paradigms will prove to be the most profound and enormous technological chalenges we have yet faced.  This newest technology gives us the ability to be everywhere, share everything and connect to everyone, instantly and forever.  If we survive the takeoff we will find ourselves in a land of business and social utopia!

For business, it’s email, calendaring, collaboration, virtualization of the office, applications and more.  Socially, it has expanded our world a hundred fold.  It bridges distance, bringing together our friends and family, which in any previous life would have been left worlds apart. It has allowed us to connect in ways never heard of only 15 short years ago.  We are entering our technological adolescence.  We have only scratched the surface as to what we can do in this new dimension we have created.

Without getting philosophical on the topic, I think you get my drift.  It’s new, it’s exciting and it holds treasures beyond our current imaginations.  But it is also spilling out of our hands and that translates to out of our control.  Which brings me to the point I want to make about cloud based computing.

Cloud based computing is completely out of our control.  I mean it, literally.  Cloud computing in a nutshell is this…We take our data and we store it on someone else’s computer.  Read the previous sentence again…We take our data and we store it on someone else’s computer.  Being the control freak that I am makes this a completely ludicrous business concept to me.  Handing the most important business commodity I have over to someone else, somewhere I don’t know.

I have been supporting small to mid-size companies for 15+ years as an I.T. consultant.  One thing I have learned is that the company data is pretty much the company itself.  I know they say the “people” make the company and I get that, but operating from my business experience, it’s the data.  CEOs come and go, but the data remains.  Lose the data and the company can tank.  It can happen almost overnight.  I’ve seen it.  It’s because we over-leverage the technology.  We feel we have to. It’s become one of the supreme laws of business.  Push the technology until it pushes back.

There are a lot of companies that are moving their critical business data out to the cloud. They are moving all of it and leaving it up to the professionals to manage it.  The companies are doing their due diligence and thoroughly investigating the service providers.  Making sure the SLA’s are solid and the data is safe in their hands and application up time is at a maximum.  The Service providers are running their business with their own diligence and with best intentions.  But inevitable is going to happen…It has already happened…To Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and others.  The rock solid names failed to maintain the systems and the clients paid dearly.  It will happen again and again.

Here is one quick example. In April, of last year, Amazon’s highly touted cloud service busted.  And it busted hard!  Not only did their cloud service go off line, they lost client data.  That was a catastrophic failure.  Some of Amazon’s cloud service customers reported being down for over 72 hours.  Many of them reported large chunks of their data that were never recovered. There are dozens of articles that report similar disasters with services like Microsoft’s Hotmail, Google’s Gmail, RIM’s Blackberry, Apple’s Mobile Me, Go Daddy Hosting Services and other cloud based services that we entrusted to hold and preserve our data and application systems.

Be smart, do your homework and be diligent not just in your investigation of the service providers, but in all aspects of housing, securing and managing your data.  It’s the life blood of your company.  I promise that you will thank yourself at some point.

Here are some pointers for looking into cloud based services.

• Use cloud computing for what your company can benefit and never over leverage this technology. If you can do it better on local systems then keep it local.
• Always have a backup plan.  Generate and document a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) to help protect you from the inevitable outage or data loss.  I provided you proof that it happens so plan for it.
• Maintain, review and update your DRP quarterly.
• Maintain redundant, tangible and verifiable backups of your important company data. Store it online and near-onlinewithin the walls of your business.
• Test and verify your backups monthly and review your backup procedure quarterly.
• Make sure at least two members of your organization fully understand the workings and nuances of the cloud service(s) and the backup procedures you are employing and how to administrate them. Don’t rely on customer service’s help.
• If you don’t have in-house personnel to provide these essential services, train someone or hire a qualified I.T. support company to manage it for you.  Its pennies on the dollar compared to what you will lose if you don’t.

When you are shopping for cloud based services:

• Look up track records and read reviews of the service provider.
• Read the Service Level Agreements (SLA) thoroughly and ask questions until you are fully satisfied with your understanding of it.
• In the instance of data storage services, make sure the service plan you select has local data synchronization capabilities so you can maintain data redundancy on your premises.
• Test before you commit. Don’t push your data or applications to a cloud based service without giving it a good hard test drive.  Try and break it to find the weak points.
• Consider your future needs when assessing a provider and their services. Make sure they can accommodate your needs as you grow or change.
• If you don’t have someone in-house that fully understands what you are looking for in cloud based service, hire a consultant to bridge the gap.  It’s a good idea to have someone on your side that can represent your interest.

Thank you for reading and please share any comments, suggestions or insight you have on this subject. They will be most appreciated.