Cloud computing – an idea that’s time has come?

Posted on 20. Jul, 2009 by Rory McCafferty in Social Networking, Uncategorized, Web 2.0

For some time now the tech world has been abuzz with cloud computing. The concept provides great promise, companies can operate with less hardware and use on a need to basis, every application can be on the web with users accessing remotely. According to IDC the market for cloud computing will be $42 billion in 2012, hardly a number to sneeze at. I have myself been a proponent of cloud computing and looked at ways to cut costs and increase agility for our company through the use of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Their marketing pitch is that you can get “compute power, storage, and other servicesâ€“gaining access to a suite of elastic IT infrastructure services as your business demands them.” They are not the only company that is eager to get part of the business, Google has various offerings such as Google Apps. When I Twittered a link on Microsoft questioning cloud computing I received a reply from someone at Microsoft who worked in this area saying that they were committed and pointing me to their Windows Azure platform.

Recently I have been wondering if cloud computing is really ready for prime time. The news flow suggests that the jury may still be out on that. Twitter’s data in the cloud at Google Apps was hacked and downloaded and emailed to TechCrunch. Then there was high profile hosting company Rackspace who have spent nearly $290 million on equipment to allow hosting on the cloud since last year. The problem is there has been a couple of outages taking sites down such as Justin Timberlake and a couple of people I know who were not best pleased. TMCnet contributor writes

Origin Storage, the storage systems integration provider, reportedly said the company does not find the repeated security breaches in Twitter surprising. The company said that such attacks will be expected as many IT staff and managers are being pushed into adopting cloud computing services on a fast track basis.

There are two forces at work at many companies, they are getting pressure to go to the cloud to cut costs and streamline development but technology heads are not usually keen to leave security in the hands of others and recent cases such as those above are not going to encourage them.

I think in summary that cloud computing will change the way people use computers and companies do business, however it does have some way to go and it could get bumpy.

Tags: amazon, aws, cloud computing, idc, microsoft