Cloud Computing 'May Be a Lot of Hot Air'

Wisegate, which bills itself as the anti-social network for senior IT professionals, polled its members – IT execs from midsized and large companies – and found that 53 percent had "no near-term plans" to adopt the cloud for its company's critical data. That prompted the company to wonder if the cloud computing craze is nothing but "a lot of hot air."
The law seems to be getting in the way for some companies. A number said government or industry regulations (such as HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley) prevent them from adopting cloud-based applications.

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Comments

tr1x

I can't believe there's even that many companies thinking about adopting it. I would never trust anything sensitive on someone elses server... I guess the lower costs outweigh the risks.

veritas_libertas

How dare you pour cold water on The Cloud. We for one welcome our Cloud Overlords....

Seriously though, I think it's somewhat overblown. The Cloud is here to stay in someways, but it's not going to overtake aspect of IT. In someways it will/has changed things permanently, like mobile computing.

tpatt100

The law seems to be getting in the way for some companies. A number said government or industry regulations (such as HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley) prevent them from adopting cloud-based applications.

Well yeah I always figured this would be a problem but it is going to get big for everything else for the mainstream users out there. The money making potential is there and you can't really ignore it.

When the industry wants to get the business side of business that has to adhere to the policies, I am sure they will find ways to become compliant in some way OR the standards recognize the changes and adapts the policies to find a way to include cloud storage.

erpadmin

tpatt100 wrote: »

Well yeah I always figured this would be a problem but it is going to get big for everything else for the mainstream users out there. The money making potential is there and you can't really ignore it.

My contention for cloud computing has never been with mainstream users. In fact, my favorite cloud application has to be Dropbox. I love never having to have a thumb drive, and plus I don't mind having school papers and general stuff for work on there (I don't trust the cloud with personal info or confidential work information.) The issue here is having enterprises go to cloud for stuff like databases with PIs, and confidential-proprietary information sitting there (other than e-mail and CRM type of things.) Data that needs to stay in-house may not easily be put into the cloud because of regulatory laws like HIPAA.

dave330i

tr1x wrote: »

I can't believe there's even that many companies thinking about adopting it. I would never trust anything sensitive on someone elses server... I guess the lower costs outweigh the risks.

Not all clouds are public.

the_Grinch

dave330i wrote: »

Not all clouds are public.

Exactly my thought. Many companies don't realize they can leverage the power of the cloud by controlling the infrastructure. At the MSP I was at, we had a number of clients who hired us to move their servers to a data center and then setup Citrix to allow them global access to all their apps and data. Specifically, since they cite HIPAA, we setup a medical client with about 20 remote offices and one HQ up on Citrix to do everything. All was within HIPAA compliance and it worked out extremely well for them.

Saundie

dave330i wrote: »

Not all clouds are public.

Am I alone in wondering what the difference is between a "private cloud" and a "geographically dispersed cluster"? As far as I can tell they're the same thing, which means that Microsoft have been talking about "private clouds" since 2003...

tr1x

dave330i wrote: »

Not all clouds are public.

So no communications go over the internet? This isn't the only concern though, what about the people managing the servers where these confidential files reside.. couldn't they look at them?

ptilsen

Saundie wrote: »

Am I alone in wondering what the difference is between a "private cloud" and a "geographically dispersed cluster"? As far as I can tell they're the same thing, which means that Microsoft have been talking about "private clouds" since 2003...

You are correct. A geographically dispersed cluster is the technical implementation of the cloud. The business side or logical way to represent it may be as a "cloud", but that is exactly what it is.

MAC_Addy

I can see places like schools running from the cloud - in fact, I know of one doing so right now. They're running software that used to be installed on the local servers, but now runs from the state office.

tpatt100

I have my own private cloud but only when I eat Thai food.

Saundie

ptilsen wrote: »

You are correct. A geographically dispersed cluster is the technical implementation of the cloud. The business side or logical way to represent it may be as a "cloud", but that is exactly what it is.

That's a relief. I guess I can start working towards getting over my prejudice towards the term "the cloud" now.

onesaint

ptilsen wrote: »

You are correct. A geographically dispersed cluster is the technical implementation of the cloud. The business side or logical way to represent it may be as a "cloud", but that is exactly what it is.

A cluster (even geographically separate) unites hardware to appear as a single resource while the "cloud" goes a step further, pooling resources in order to allocate multiple fractions of those resources as single instances. Or at least, that's how I understand it.

ETA: Private clouds are what I think will be the result of all this. Also, public storage (dropbox, icloud, etc.) and IaaS are becoming norms as well. Although, I think IaaS will be largely privatized as well. Once Openstack is a bit more seasoned.