Comments on: A cloud evaporates

By: FOI Topics and Links of the Week :: The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:35:10 +0000

[...] the internet, but the recent past. Many of the recent lame moments have been covered in this blog (Danger Sidekick phones lose users’ data for weeks; Apple rejects Google Voice; Amazon removes 1984 from the Kindle). The old stuff is fun. I [...]

By: Happy Birthday, Internet! « Purdue eTech

Happy Birthday, Internet! « Purdue eTech — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:44:13 +0000

[...] access them from a simple net box (Hmmm – I remember using “dumb terminals” back in 1983!). Elizabeth Oppenheimer points out that “There are many reasons to worry about cloud computing. Data stored in the [...]

By: de naakte mens | overleven in de informatiemaatschappij » Blog Archive » De dagelijkse kost, maandag 19 oktober

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:38:23 +0000

[...] cloud kan ook uit elkaar ploffen, waarschuwt Jonathan Zittrain op zijn site. Misschien toch maar een backup maken op je oude vertrouwde computer. [...]

By: Bertin Martens

Bertin Martens — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:57:18 +0000

This shows that Nicolas Carr’s “Big Switch” idea, equating cloud providers with electricity providers, doesn’t really fit. Electricity is a commodity, an indifferentiable product. It doesn’t matter who supplies it to you. Your company or personal data are not a commodity, they are irreplacable for you. Trusting them in the hands of one cloud provider exposes you to a Black Swan type of risk: rare but very costly when it occurs. You cannot switch to another provider to recuperate your original data. Oliver Williamson, last week’s Nobel Prize in economics, explains why this “asset specificity” entails high risks that require a serious long-term contractual relationship.

By: Hank

Hank — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:33:08 +0000

@Adam Fisk,

This article is not a challenge to the “cloud architecture” you espouse. The article refers to a self described “data services provider” that lost all of its customers’ data.

By: Adam Fisk

Adam Fisk — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:13:37 +0000

Oh, I should also point out the two largest cloud providers, Google and Amazon, make it extremely easy to take your data off. I know the Google guys and have met Werner Vogels. Their goals are not as different from yours as you might think – I’d even argue they have the same goals but are executing them with more powerful tools. No offense =).

By: Adam Fisk

Adam Fisk — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:10:56 +0000

While I always appreciate a watchful eye on potential threats to our personal liberty, I continue to maintain cloud architectures are far more liberating than they are threatening. The best analogy I can come up with is to the car industry. Once upon a time, it was the coolest of cool to know how to slide under your car and rebuild your engine. I still think that’s pretty cool. Over the years, though, it became clear that car companies were much better at building cars than we were. Toyota has the resources and expertise to build a Prius, and to get under the hood and fix the battery charging system on one of those babies is an impossibility. While understanding it and knowing how to do it yourself is great, the world’s quite clearly a better place due to higher tech cars that are simply beyond the reach of backyard hobbyists.

The same is true of computers themselves – fewer and fewer people build their own computers from scratch these days. It’s simply become too complicated.

The same is true of the cloud, and for anyone who has ever used the various cloud services (I’ve been using Google App Engine and Amazon EC2, S3 etc for years now), their power is astonishing. The amount of time they save is simply mindblowing, especially for small companies like mine that need to watch every dime and every hour.

By: Saqib Ali

Saqib Ali — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:03:01 +0000

It is simply about Reputational risk. Reputational risk (damage to an organization through loss of its reputation or standing), can arise as a consequence of operational failures. Every company understands reputational risk, particularly businesses who regard their brand as one of their most critical assets. Google is one of them. They have a reputation to maintain. But I suppose Microsoft Danger didn’t care….