In Cloud We Trust?
Cloud computing may have been one of the biggest "buzzwords" (buzz phrases?) of this past year. From webmail to storage sites to web-based applications, everything online was sold under a new moniker in 2008: they're all "cloud" services now. Yet even though millions of internet users make use of these online services in some way, it seems that we haven't been completely sold on the cloud being any more safe or stable than data stored on our own computers.
Do You Trust Cloud Computing?
In thinking about this issue, we posed the question on the social web aggregation service (and new-fangled discussion board), FriendFeed to see what people would say. Surprisingly, even on a site that tends to attract a lot of technology's earliest adopters, the responses were mixed. When asked the question: "Do you trust the cloud?," the majority of responses either came back as a flat-out "no" or as a longer explanation as to why their response was a "maybe" or a "sometimes." In other words, some people trust the cloud here, but not there, or for this, but not that.
For many, the cloud is no more trustworthy, than a hard drive on their own machine. Despite the fact that web-based services, like Google's Gmail, Calendar, and Picasa, live on some of Google's hundreds of thousands of servers, there's still the feeling that data you don't have access to on your own machine is data you could lose.
Many respondents stated that they kept local backups of important data in addition to whatever data was also stored online. Others cited a combination of cloud plus local data as the ideal solution for cloud services. Says William Steward, "Evernote works as I know there's a backup on two of my laptops, as well as the cloud."
Why No Trust?
It seems that trusting the cloud wasn't a simple "yes" or "no" question. Some said the cloud was trustworthy enough for non-critical data, but not for secure and private communications, such as those used in the enterprise. And still others noted that trusting cloud services was risky, especially given the recent shutdowns of the once-hot services like I Want Sandy, Pownce, Google Notebook, and Jaiku.
Yet one of the most thoughtful comments came from Todd McKinney who noted that "most things today aren't really in the cloud so much as they are a copy on a single company's server." What he means by this is that when storing data in the cloud there should be some sort of built in redundancy. "The day when Facebook can delete an account and they can't delete the account assets, then maybe we can start thinking about trust," says Todd.
Basically what Todd's envisioning is what a real future of cloud computing should look like. Data stored online shouldn't solely exist in one place and time. Once "cloud-stored," data should be available from anywhere and no one company should have control over whether that data lives or dies.
What We Need
Getting there won't be easy. How can single assets - like photos on Facebook, for example -seamlessly spring into existence at the same time you upload data to Flickr, or SmugMug, or Picasa, or SkyDrive? There is no solution for this yet. But this is the still undelivered promise of Microsoft's Live Mesh (see this video - half an hour in, Twitter and Facebook connectors are demoed.) Although intriguing, no real connectors like that have been released to the public. And no competitors have built anything similar.
At the very least, some basic cross-posting services, tools, or desktop applications could move us towards a future where local data was replicated to numerous clouds with one simple action. Even a basic photo uploader tool that synced pictures to all the free online services would be much appreciated at this point. Or a document uploader that synced files between your computer, Live Mesh, Google Docs, Zoho, and others. That way, we could live in the best of both worlds with the confidence that our data was relatively safe...somewhere.
At the end of the day, just labeling services as "cloud computing" applications isn't enough to change people's mindsets about what it means to really move to the cloud. Companies need to show us more stability and security and need to provide us with more solutions to link and/or sync our local data to their services. When that day arrives, we'll know that we've finally reached the world of cloud computing. Until then, those clouds will remain just whiffs of smoke.
Image credit: Google services via Lonesailor
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Comments
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The Cloud will be one of the selling/marketing points of the new Palm Pre. One could argue it's the first device designed *for* The Cloud.
Many veteran Palm users are against not having local desktop-based sync. And many do not trust their personal Contact information to The Cloud. It's hard for me not to be sympathetic with suspicions of The Cloud when there are accounts like this seemingly one after the other;
http://prepoint.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/the-pre-and-the-cloud-and-you-2/
We all wanna share socially.
And we all get the creeps when we see how the stuff we put online can get shared in ways we would never have wanted.
Cloud services need to find a way to give us the same sense of privacy and identity online that we have in our everyday offline lives.
Sarah Palin's email was "in the cloud."
All of the hacked twitter accounts were "in the cloud."
etc...
The cloud won't mean much to me until it is protected with something more than just a password...
Services like Tarpipe are connecting different parts of the cloud like lightning does in the real world. The marriage of evernote and tarpipe will evolve to a point where we transcend the whole cloud vs. hard drive discussion.
For our collaboration application colaab we've been looking at various ways in which we might integrate with Live Mesh.
We've created a ten minute video on vimeo demonstrating the progress we've made, and how you are able to sync data securely and effectively.
http://www.vimeo.com/2542327
Bob
--
Bob Thomson
storm ideas
http://blog.stormideas.com
http://www.colaab.com
twitter: movingforwards
As usual, good post !
the link (see this video - half an hour in, Twitter and Facebook connectors are demoed.)is not working :-(
@JacopoGio: The link is working for me (http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/Ori-Amiga-Programming-the-Mesh/). Maybe it was a momentary fluke?
I think these are very fair points in our experience. At EchoSign, we've found you need an answer. We've gotten past these issues by a combination of (1) sending local copies of all contracts electronically signed to all parties upon execution, (2) providing ability to store content also in other cloud apps including Salesforce.com, and (3) providing a good old fashioned option of exporting your data to a DVD-ROM on an automated schedule -- in a structured, searchable format.
First, I think we need to better define what we mean by terms like "cloud computing". Do you mean grid computing? Do you mean web-based SaaS? Do you mean utility computing?
I would say that most people I speak to in the industry usually mean web-based SaaS (which I'll refer to as just SaaS from now on) when they refer to "cloud computing". I.e. an application that is developed, hosted and licensed by a third-party and administered through a web browser. It should usually have web API's as well.
I'm in the industry. While I definitely do agree that the security of data is a HUGE issue with SaaS, I think the premise of the "What We Need" section is flawed.
Simply throwing a customer's data to multiple spots won't help. Actually, it could make things worse in the short run.
The ambiguity and uncertainty of that "somewhere" would be the nail in the coffin of a SaaS deal with a midsize or large enterprise.
One of the top issues that I see is that customers want CONTROL. They want to know EXACTLY where the data is (including backup datacenters), how it's encrypted (even at rest), how it's transported, how it's backed-up, what the DR strategy is, etc.
It's hard enough to provide the above information and assurances to a customer when the data is going to one spot. Now try managing that problem if the data is going to multiple places.
I'm not saying that the mesh computing idea won't work - i just think we've got a ways to go. Businesses are having a hard enough time moving their data offsite to a single location, let alone to a distributed infrastructure that they don't control.
The biggest concern I have from an enterprise view is Ownership of Data.
There have been some high profile cases of users being blocked from Google Docs or gMail because of an unforseen violation of a Terms of Service.
Having this happen to a large company or organization can be catostrophic.
There are obviously ways to solve this, one of which is due diligence in the first place, but I think before more wide-spread adoption is to take place, this must be addressed more formally.
Troy - I totally agree. I see this ALL the time. Questions that many enterprise customers often ask:
- If I accidentally forget to pay my monthly subscription fee, what happens? Do I have assurances that my data is still there and I can start the service back up?
- What if you go out of business? What assurances do I have that I can still get may data back?
- How easy/hard is it to get my data out if I want to end my subscription?
These are just the tip of the iceberg. These things need to be written into an SLA.
Some of the biggest complexities of SaaS are not technical, per se, but legal/contractual.
To secure the data of users of our online time tracking service, we've taken some obvious measures, such as using mirrored hard drives and making regular offsite backups of all our data.
However, we also decided early on that we would allow complete account backups to be downloaded by our users. We've taken this further, and now allow accounts to be restored from users' own backups.
These extra measures give our customers' complete control over their own data, as it should be. I'm hopeful that similar policies will be adopted by other SaaS vendors, since they should help raise public trust in SaaS in general.
@kayvaan: I see your point, but I guess I was not thinking "enterprise" when I wrote that last bit. I was thinking more about personal files, photos, posts, etc. Perhaps SMB, but not enterprise. Still, even at best, a cross-posting service would only be an interim step to having redundant data in the cloud- something to help out until we had real solutions. The thing is, we *don't even have a good cross-posting service yet.* That, in fact, was what I was really trying to get across. The "cloud" is no safer than any other single point of failure today in the eyes of its users (whether or not that's accurate). Hope that makes sense.
@sarah - yeah, i know you were mainly talking about the consumer space. i just go off on enterprise since that's where my head is at. :)
one interesting question is whether consumers SHOULD even have to worry about this. shouldn't SaaS providers be doing geo-redundancy (the technical term for "cross-posting" ;)? if consumers are having to do it themselves, haven't the SaaS providers failed to garner our trust?
or should we as consumers always assume the worst and do this geo-redundand backup ourselves?
@Bob:
i liked coolab a lot. great video too. will keep and eye on you guys. there are some claims that you "copied" backboard. any comments on that?.
thanks.
@Avatar - Thanks, glad you liked it.
We haven't heard any suggestions that we copied anyone, but if you check out the whois records for colaab.com and getbackboard.com you can see that colaab.com was actually registered a month before getbackboard.
I've been working on colaab since the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha was announced which was in September 2007, quite some time before backboard was launched.
Thanks, Bob
I commented about it also on FF when you started with the discussion there and again, by working with a Cloud based service [icloud - an online desktop model] I often notice a big resistance towards Cloud Computing usage, mainly concerned to security/privacy issues.
It's not a surprise that many users already feel very comfortable with many cloud apps available and use it frequently to create new content and share around the web.
As I see it, the more they can relate to a Cloud environment, the better will the transition be. Once they're familiar with a UI and understand how that data is being stored and accessed, trust comes to their way.
Still, while companies evolve to it in a whole new level, most will use it as an extra tool and not as a replacement.
Soon, I believe a Standard has to be set to Cloud Computing, about the rules and legal effects, specially when it comes to B2B services.
But in general, I can see that, by talking about it so much, there is a big interest and therefore, a true spot for Cloud Computing in our routine.
Great Post!
@Bob:
Awesome. that settles it. and i love what you are doing with coolab. the Live Mesh app also looks very promising.
Cloud Computing is untrustworthy, that's it...
http://kingofgng.com/eng/2009/02/18/rule-number-one-never-trust-the-cloud-computing/