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PCCA Journal|1

st

Quarter 2011

34

ITWatch

Should You Keep Your

Head Out of the Clouds?

By Greg Smela

A

few weeks ago I got a frantic late-night

phone call from a relative who had ex-

perienced an all-too-common computer

problem: He had lost all his data when a

thunderstorm-induced power surge pretty

much destroyed his small home-based network.

Of course, said relative had been aware of the importance

of backing up his data for years after a previous incident

where he lost an important report when a hard drive failed

on his small network server. So why the late-night call? Well,

he

had

been backing up his data, but his disaster recovery

plan involved one of the catchphrases floating around: “cloud

computing.”

Cloud computing, also known as “Hey Marketing Depart-

ment, we need to come up with something so people can buy

into the newest fad since we don’t have anything new,” is

defined by Wikipedia as “Internet-based computing, whereby

shared resources, software, and information are provided to

computers and other devices on-demand, like electricity.”

In theory this is a great idea and allows anyone and every-

one to store (and access) their information from anywhere in

the world. In a sense, it is similar to the ease-of-use enabled

by online email services or projects such as “Google Docs,”

which allows you to create, edit, share, and store business

documents online.

In fact, the new version of Microsoft’s ubiquitous produc-

tivity suite, “Microsoft Office 365,” offers unfettered (by the

desktop) access 24/7. In the product introduction, marketing

folks ask you to “Say hello to the next generation of cloud

power services. You now have the power to enable your

people to work from virtually anywhere, anytime, and on

any device with simple, familiar collaboration and com-

munication solutions—

all backed by the proven security

and guaranteed reliability you expect from Microsoft.

(Emphasis mine.) If that isn’t frightening, I’m not sure what is.

To be fair, I’m really, really not picking on the Redmond

Giant (Microsoft just happens to be the largest player in

this game) as much as the general idea of turning over your

secrets to a third party unless you are 100 percent aware of

what that entails. Many, many companies are making the

move to cloud computing-based strategies in a desire to save

money.

In fact, entire state governments are moving their entire

IT infrastructures to cloud-based computing systems, which

makes me wonder if any of those people in charge have been

following all the stories about privacy (as in, lack of), secu-

rity (as in, broken), and reliability (as in, not too) that have

plagued the online community in the past several months.

As a high-tech business owner, ask yourself if you want

your company’s private data stored “somewhere” in a man-

ner that effectively leaves you out of the picture if there is

a physical meltdown/natural disaster of some type or your

hosting company goes belly-up. It has happened despite