Technology in the Cloud

Web 2.0 The Magazine

A Journal for Exploring New Internet Frontiers.

Cloud computing is beautiful but risky business for companies today.

TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLOUD

We older folks remember the old acronym TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). The younger roamers of the World Wide Web, particularly those who use Web 2.0 do not.

The appeal of free, or almost free storage of digital data including digital photos has lured thousands to the Cloud. Digital photos require a large amount of digital storage that the offer by some of the largest providers to upload your photos to their memory farms for free, or almost free, is too good to resist. The providers such as Kodak Gallery and AOL Pictures, to name a couple, offer to store a certain number of images for free hoping to get users accustomed to uploading until they eventually pay for the space and order prints or other services.

Kodak, Hewlett Packard, AOL, Yahoo and Sony, who all have photo storage services, have found that maintaining their service is an expensive proposition and with a poor business model when a large part of the service is free to all users. Some of these services, which were not part of a major corporation, have gone out of business and their subscribers have lost their stored photos when they could not download them within the 24-hour notice given. Others who use Kodak Gallery were given notice that unless they converted to a paying basis, their photos would be deleted.

Some services like Photo Works have found a profitable business model in storing photos because their clients buy photo prints and other photo services, as well as pay for some services, but Photo Works does not operate on the massive scale that the major players attempted.

The Cloud model for business computer data is still to be proven. Microsoft is investing in massive data centers to enable their coming service models and, if anyone can make them pay, it is Microsoft. But they will have a hard sell before major corporations will trust their vital data off premises .

The cyber attacks on government data sites and major corporations have created an atmosphere of caution . What may work is an uploading of legacy data to a cloud service, thereby freeing in-house facilities for current data.

The Cloud model of data storage is going to be tested during the next few years because the complete computerization of everything, now underway, is creating such massive amounts of data that must be accessed upon demand, that it is overwhelming the capacity of government and private facilities. There is danger in the execution of the Cloud services because those who hold the data may control the use of that data.

The very existence of massive data centers holding both private and public information will be an irresistible attraction for hackers and information thieves. The level of security necessary for the protection of the Cloud will be far beyond anything now in existence.

TANSTAAFL By Stan Veit