The Realities Of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a basically a buzzword or catch phrase, created to describe the role of infrastructure as a service(IaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS). Richard Stallman, the initiator of the free software collaboration known as GNU, recently denounced cloud computing as “worse than stupidity”. Given his experience and achievements, I can appreciate why he would have this point of view, since a lot of what the internet does could be described as cloud computing. Perhaps what he fails to realise, as somebody that is at the echelons of IT success, is that the majority of users out there today, represent a very different demographic to those that influenced the world of computers since 1983.

Cloud computing has been sneaking into our homes without us being aware since the advent of the social network. Initially, aside from business applications, PC's had the ability to serve the role of music player, movie watcher and storing photo albums. Now we see all these applications being served from cloud-like providers. We upload our data to places like YouTube, Myspace and Facebook. But what are these if not essentially a cloud which we access to make life quicker, easier and more secure. How many times has a hard drive failed on you and you have lost all your data? This is just a fact of hard drives, they fail, they crash, they die and you lose things that can't be replaced.

Another problem facing the end user is security. Aside from you mac users out there, most of us who use windows, must have a multi tiered approach to security that gives us the ability to properly scan for viral infections and rootkits. This is very time consuming and the chances of you losing everything are once again, an ever present danger. This loss of personal effects is not something that affects only end users but small business' too. Who do not have the budget for an IT team with the abilities required to combat the ever increasing and evolved security threats from around the world let alone maintain standard upgrades. The percentage of users still using the flawed IE6 are a testament to this fact.

The answer to these problems is the cloud, it allows us to back up our data and in some cases, especially for small businesses, host their entire software suite online. This removes the need for a crack security team, it removes the need for implementing, installing, and maintaining costly hardware and software licences. In some of the more cost-conscious environments it removes the need for an IT team altogether. Putting the power back in the hands of small business owners, to get on with what they do best. Without the massive investment required to put together an effective IT solution, which in turn they intend to maintain.