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The Problem With Cloud Computing
Yesterday the internet was so a buzz, you would have thought Microsoft had gone under. The culprit? Gmail was not working.
Let me rephrase that, the web version of Gmail was not working. Those with iPhones, other popmail accounts, or iGoogle were still able to receive and send email. Yet even with all these work arounds, people were still acting like clean water had run out.
I won’t lie, I too grumbled for a little bit about the loss of email. Then I realized there’s a bigger problem here than not being able to see the new shirts from Nerdy Shirts and what’s happening on Facebook.
Gmail uses cloud computing. So rather than having your emails stored on your computer’s hard drive (or your work’s servers) it’s stored on one at Google’s headquarters.
We just received a small sample of what could happen if our connection to Google goes down. Imagine if one day Google were to lose power or change their terms of conditions and required you to pay or submit personal info to access your email. What would you do then?
Ubiquity of the Cloud
Gmail is just the tip of the ice berg. Companies like Amazon use their servers to host companies like The New York Times’ data, Verizon hosts a great deal of their data on AT&T’s servers, and even this blog you’re reading isn’t hosted locally. A lot of very important data is being accessed via the cloud, let’s hope it’s also being backed up locally.
Cloud computing definitely makes life easier. I can log into Gmail from any computer with the internet and access those emails. However, if I have not downloaded them to my PC I might have to jump through hoops to attain them or at worst they could be gone forever.
Google provided an explanation for the downtime and they’re also working on an offline version of Gmail. I assume this is in response to concerns about a loss in connection.
What do you think?
So how about you, what are your thoughts on cloud computing? Do the pros of the cloud outweigh the cons?
Did you miss out on Gmail yesterday? What’s the longest you’ve had to wait for a site or program to come back online?
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8 Responses to “The Problem With Cloud Computing”
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Zach Says:
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:16 am
Nice article! One other thing I used to use Gmail for, and I still think a lot of people do this, was to email documents and images to myself so I could store them in Gmail and access them from any place with an internet connection. With other forms of storage and smart phones this isn’t as much of an issue anymore, but it’s still very real for a lot of people.
I think when it comes to cloud computing you should just know what you’re getting into. If I really have an email in my Gmail box that I want to make sure is saved I’ll email it to my Outlook account at work so that I can have it saved on my physical system.
Either way I think an offline Gmail app would be a solid solution to this particular problem, even though I don’t really see a great need for it at this point for the individual. Some businesses use Gmail exclusively as business email, so in that scenario, an offline app would definitely be useful.
Greg Rutter Says:
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:19 am
Great post. It was forwarded to my gmail address and had a couple ads interspersed into what you wrote but I think I got the gist of it.
Mike Kimmel Says:
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:36 am
Gmail going down wasn’t an issue for me. All of my mail is stored locally in Mail on my mac, or Outlook on the PC. I do understand the angry mob mentality associated with services going down. What if all your info stored in the cloud all of a sudden was inaccessible?
I believe cloud computing is in it’s infancy and will take a couple more years of growing. It seems that most consumers are not ready to upload all their pictures and whatnot’s into thin air and expect to retrieve it at any time and any location at the drop of a coin. Well at least I know I’m not.
The backbone of the internet needs to be stable in order to trust online computing. This includes broadband speed and availability. Hopefully the $787 Billion broadband stimulus will help the US roll out faster broadband to more locations.
The pro’s to cloud computing are hard to beat. If all your files, pictures, music, videos and documents are stored online, a browser is all that’s needed to access them. Both Google and Microsoft have online versions of office products that don’t even require locally stored files. So now a computer with minimal specs can do just about any task from anywhere as long as there’s a decent internet connection. All of a sudden collaborating on projects becomes easier, editing and reviewing documents, presentations, training all become more accessible to a crowd of people that need to stay connected.
What happens if there is a power outage? What about the service going offline? Nuclear winter? I know it will be a long while before I can trust a single file to Google, Microsoft, or Amazon’s S3. I want my 1800 page biography stored on my laptop so I can change things when I need to. At the same time I want two backups of that same file, one on an external drive and the last file I will trust to the cloud.
It’s going to take some convincing for me to give my first file to the cloud. Time will tell, get back to me when I can be promised 100% up time on both ends of the connection.
Eric Says:
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I think Mike makes an interesting point about broadband also being an issue. I know my family in rural Michigan weren’t able to get high speed internet access until last year. It’s a necessity for cloud computing, especially concerning files and photos.
I would also add that the upload speed needs to be improved for high speed internet. Everyone talks about how amazing their download speed is, but that file needs to get up to the cloud in the first place. Get our upload speeds faster and cloud computing will definitely become a viable option.
Andrea Says:
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Great article! This is something I hadn’t really given much thought to until now. I rely solely on web-based email, and I do store a lot of important information there. In the interest of not duplicating efforts by storing things locally and in my email, I usually feel satisfied knowing I can get back to my stuff in email when I need it. Now I suppose I should reconsider.
Andy Says:
September 4th, 2009 at 1:15 am
Well, there is always a balancing act between storing your data on your hard drive that can suddenly crash and on the cloud that can become unavailable. Still i believe into cloud as for instance Amazon S3 has 5 separate data centers and the data is replicated across all of them. i heavily rely on Google Apps to run my business and I suffer from outages just like everybody else.
Aaron Says:
September 8th, 2009 at 2:50 am
I’m imagining what I would do if my connection to google went down. Hmm…I’d do the same thing I would if my connection to hotmail went down…LOL. Realizing so many people rely on any large service they won’t be down for long. For a ton of people I’d bet hotmail was unreachable the other day until you ran a connection update you didn’t get hotmail through outlook suddenly – which could go on indefinitely if you’re too dumb to google it… :) The question is, can you afford to be down and for how long before it kills your business?
Why are you not downloading your google mail with outlook? Problem solved. Keep a copy on the server if it makes you feel good. Google only keeps your mail in the cloud if you don’t tell them not to, just like hotmail.
Back to the problem at hand: I’d say clouds are only good for the smallest businesses, and only until you can afford to get off the cloud and onto your own server. The only way to control downtime is to be the OWNER of it yourself. If you own the server, you fix it on YOUR time, not cloud time. The only reason you should be on a cloud is because you can’t afford to pay someone to run your own cloud. I can’t imagine why a decent sized business wouldn’t want an IT dept to handle everything in house (thus avoiding the rising fees, downtime@their time etc) if at all possible. If your business doesn’t depend much on email (to wan) or make much off your website I guess a downed cloud wouldn’t matter much. But that’s not a lot of businesses. Now for special training events and such maybe but not as a way to ensure your business runs.
To Andy: Uh, don’t you have a backup plan for that local data? Raid? A cheap 2nd server? At least an external backup drive? A well run business shouldn’t go down even on the cheap end. You can build a cheapo server for next to nothing to make your data redundant. Sure your main one would be perhaps quite a bit faster but the 2nd (in a cost conscious environment) is just to keep things running until you fix the first. Even if you don’t own a server, just a business pc, you should be able to back up your life in some way that allows you to get back up and running fairly quick. If you don’t know how to manage that, I’d suggest you call someone that does and pay them to get a backup plan put in place for you. It’s a small price to pay for piece of mind :)
One more thing – security! If the govt, banks, large sites(medical) etc can’t keep people out of your data (which they’ve proven time and time again) why would you want to put it out there for anyone to get at it? The bigger the data gold mine, the more people try to hack it.
CT Says:
October 5th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Well, there is always a balancing act between storing your data on your hard drive that can suddenly crash and on the cloud that can become unavailable. Still i believe into cloud as for instance Amazon S3 has 5 separate data centers and the data is replicated across all of them. i heavily rely on Google Apps to run my business and I suffer from outages just like everybody else.