Fads are nothing new in the computer industry. At the end of the last millennium the majority of internet companies were fads. Recently there was the netbooks (small underpowered laptops) fad that came and went in a year. So with any new product being widely promoted the question must be raised is it a fad. The Cloud is being advertised as a solution for all IT needs. In short “The Cloud” is moving storage and network servers that would be in your office to a distant larger server. So instead of having to buy and maintain a server in your office, you “rent” space and computing power on someone else’s servers.
There is nothing really new with the Cloud; this is how computing was done before the advent of the PC. Terminals would connect to remote computers where all the work was done and data stored. The current revival of this idea is due to the speed of the broadband internet connections. Before fast broadband (there is slow broadband such as ISDN) getting data from and to a remote server was too slow. Now delay is not much of an issue allowing for the growth of remote servers.
For small business there are three issues that still need to be resolved before going to the Cloud.
Internet Speed – As odd as it seems, here in San Diego industrial areas tend to have the slowest internet connections. Cable and the phone companies invested in heavily in residential areas. While a home can have very inexpensive, extremely fast fiber internet connections, this level of service would cost 10 times more in a business park. This is changing especially at new locations which are being built with better local connections. At older business location this roll out of service is still just growing.
While most people have some understanding of internet speeds, this is only part of the picture. Internet speeds on residential services are best case. The actual speed can dip down to a crawl when your neighbors are also using the same service provider. Business accounts generally have guaranteed level of service. The speed of the internet will not fall below a certain speed. This service level costs money and is usually many times the residential rate.
This is critical to Cloud computing. Everything your company does will go out to the internet and back. If you add more staff, you may have to increase your bandwidth. As your company adds staff and those people do more functions over the internet, data speeds will get slower. Most younger employees consider it a right to stream music and IM at work. These other features will also impact your critical connection to business resources. Sometimes this cost of extra bandwidth could swamp any short term saving.
Line of Business (LOB) applications – Most companies uses a special application that is designed for their specific industry. These applications are core to business. Most of these applications have yet been moved to internet. An example is QuickBooks accounting software. There is a web version, but it is a very limited version of the desktop application and has gotten poor reviews from accounting professionals. Most current LOBs need to be run locally. A local server is still necessary for these types of applications.
Even if there is an adequate web version of your LOB application, do you want to lose control of your core business? If you have the software running on your own server and the software publisher goes out of business the only problem is about future updates and support. If their servers are turned off and are hosting your data, they also turn off your business. This just happen to me, we were using an online time tracking software and the company decided it was not profitable enough and closed it down with only a month’s notice. We had to scramble to replace it with a solution that we are hosting on our servers. Thus they essentially hold to your data hostage. If they want to increase the monthly price, you do not have much of a choice but to pay as moving your data may not be possible at all. This loss of control will start to become more of an issue as hosting companies start using your data for advertising and other purposes. Gmail now displays ads based on the content of your email. This is fine for personal use, but do you want your competitors having access to your information.
Control of data -This is similar to control of your business application, but includes all types of data you create. Your access to that data goes through another company that can snip you off. There was a report on NPR about a Gmail user that Google cut off. One day he tried to log into his account and was denied access. He could not get any response from Google. Only after intervention of the NPR reporter did he gain access to his account.
Since you and your employees can access your data from anyplace that also means the former employees, competitors and any hacker can have access also. Having separate functions (such as LOB, E-Mail, data storage and remote access) hosted at separate sites makes maintaining passwords and security harder. It is now more important that you do not use shared or simple passwords.
Rereading this article, I did not mean to paint too dark of a picture of The Cloud. The majority of users will not have these issues. Hosting, outside of LOB services, is competitive and that will control pricing and security. No provider wants to be known for too high of pricing or lose of clients data. The cloud is great for companies that do not use a LOB (They just use Office type applications) and high speed internet with the option to increase their bandwidth and maintain a local copy of all their data and email. For these companies, an onsite server may be overkill. Also if they have staff working in separate locations, the Cloud makes more sense. We have both onsite and Cloud based office solutions and can sit down and talk to you about your company’s options.
