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