21.Mar.2010 Is “The Cloud” the way to go?

However, the issue of real interest to me at moment is the viability of the Cloud in general. Six months ago, I was not impressed and had concerns over the security of the data entrusted to the cloud. Now I think my resistance, and I admit this with some shame as I consider myself something of a “futurist”, was mainly due to the challenges caused by the dramatic change in thinking needed to embrace the Cloud concept. I have reversed my opinion to the extent that our primary product (Mindsystems Amode V2) will certainly be moving in that direction over the next twelve months.

In reality, there are two major forms of data security in this context:

1. Ensuring access to data residing in the Cloud is restricted to those authorised
2. The quality and integrity of data backup couple the disaster recovery capability of the system.

While access is easily managed, backup is not so easy. The fact is that many organisation and even more so individuals approach disaster recovery in a somewhat cavalier manner. Considerations such as:

• Frequency of backup
• The ability to do “bare metal” recovery including recovery to different hardware
• Location of backed-up material
• Time to recovery.

For many individuals and small businesses in particular the answers to those questions is not optimistic. However a Cloud environment hosted by a professional group will overcome these issues.

An increasingly important aspect of this debate is three-fold and focuses on the ability to operate securely away from the home base. Recently, for example, a senior Australian Naval Officer left a classified CD in the Qantas flight lounge. This would not have been possible if the Officer concerned had been using a Cloud environment. Therefore, the mobile advantages are:

1. Data security (in storage and on laptop)
2. Access to all data instantly almost regardless of location
3. Access to the updated information in the home base immediately it has been created.

As I said earlier, I have changed my mind … how about you?