A survey by “Citrix” a software company, found that a paltry 16 percent of the 1000 participants knew what cloud computing stands for. Just over half of the respondents thought that the weather can interfere with cloud computing and a whopping 29 percent think that the “cloud” is an actual cloud. “Cloud computing” is the act of storing, managing and processing data online as opposed to on your physical computer or network. But what happens during a storm? Does it cost more to store data on Cirrostratus than on Stratocumulus? Or is it all just a petty sham created by the heavens to lure us in while they make it pour whenever they want to and mess with our data? Be it the nonchalant gesture pointing towards the sky that people from the IT department make while talking about the cloud or the very intelligent use of the word “cloud” with “computing,” the misperception surrounding the term “cloud computing” is quite reasonable.
Contrary to the widely held belief, Cloud computing isn’t anything new, and it’s not related to the odd white shapes usually seen in the sky. Cloud in the technology world refers to hundreds of computers stacked in a room divided into virtual servers that you or your company can access from anywhere. When someone looks for ways to hide a dead body on Google, their terminal sends packets of data containing the string of keywords to Google’s servers. The string of words is then processed on the cloud farms which compare the string for matching results and then send another packet of data back to the terminal. These clustered computers could be anywhere in the world. “Cloud computing” is just an industry slang which is used to define almost anything that uses these servers to run their applications. Gmail and Outlook are technically “cloud computing” personal communication management services.
Storing information locally is not a very efficient thing to do in the modern age of information. Using in-house storage and management services take up space, consume a lot of electricity and require timely maintenance. Using cloud computing saves power, administration costs, costs related to in-house cooling, and in turn offloading this management and dirty work to someone else saving precious capital and labor. In short, it saves you from having to apportion a room for horrid looking earsplitting mainframes and terminals, the time wasted in running anti-virus software, worrying about hard-drive crashes and the phlegmatic employee’s porn and illegal music collection on your company’s $50,000 computer.
The sole purpose of a business is to earn money, therefore spending substantial capital on maintaining IT infrastructure for in-house storage and processing defeats the purpose. Cloud computing is more cost-effective and reliable than in-house computing, and that is one of the key reasons for its swelling popularity. Most providers provide a guarantee with a service level agreement which guarantees 24x7 availability. Cloud computing also provides benefits such as quick failover mechanisms. For example, if a server fails, hosted applications and services can easily be transited to any of the available servers. Cloud computing lets the users focus on the business itself rather than spending time on technological jargon. Computing locally comes with its own set of problems including systems going out of date which can, in turn, compromise the security and reliability of the data. Using cloud computing saves money that instead might have been spent on upgrading the hardware and peripherals cutting down on upfront costs.
Cloud computing presents its users a lot of opportunities by providing a platform for their users to develop and implement new processes, systems, and offerings almost instantly which in turn make them more competitive. It also allows companies to buy only the services they want whenever they want them. Cloud computing simplifies and accelerates the process of incorporating new services and applications in one’s business. It opens up opportunities by providing designers and web developers new and different ways to sell their goods and services through cloud technology. Businesses and organizations can conduct business much more efficiently by analyzing and using big data through the cloud.
Cloud computing binds you into long-term often inflexible contracts and although cloud service providers can be good, efficient, and reliable, using cloud computing makes the users extremely dependent on the supplier. What if your service provider decides to shut down a service you’re using? Or what if some internal error in the system causes the service to shut down? Recently, something similar happened with a startup named CareSet which was using Google’s cloud platform services when it was alerted by Google that their own system apparently was sending “intrusion attacks” to third parties. Google warned CareSet that if the problem was not fixed, then it would block CareSet’s account. What actually happened was that Google misread some of CareSet’s own web traffic, suspecting evil intent when there was none. By the time the company deciphered Google’s email, three days had gone by, and Google shut them down. Big companies who use cloud computing platforms to process their data and storage often have billions of dollars riding on these services and could lose millions within a span of 5 minutes due to the shutdown of the service.
Another problem with cloud computing is that in 3rd world countries like India the internet prices are relatively high and the connection is highly unreliable which increases the cost of running and connecting to these cloud computing setups. Therefore, in these countries, cloud computing might not be an ideal solution.
Security is a major concern for people and businesses that use cloud computing. What keeps your data safe when it is remote and traveling back and forth over the internet? Privacy is a very complex issue. Some proponents of cloud computing might argue that the cloud services of these companies come with state of the art security to keep their everyday information safe and that the cloud-based systems are more secure than conventional ones. Buying Google’s, Amazon’s, or Microsoft’s cloud-based services affords users world-class expertise at keeping data safe. But is the aforementioned statement true? The idea of all data being stored and processed somewhere in the cloud seems magical, but it still is stored in a brick and mortar location, since every bit of data is stored in some form of a server farm/facility. The weakest elements in this scenario are the technicians who manage and operate the servers the people on the utmost top of corporate paradigm, i.e., the executives and the founders and co-founders, who have unrestricted access to all data. Humans are driven by individual needs and desires and can act independently; they can be bribed or threatened. Therefore, there is always the potential that someone somewhere has the power to compromise everything.
Companies like Google and Facebook store “big data,” i.e., data that they gather about people using their services. This data is comprised of people’s credit card numbers, search history, videos, photos, and even their online purchases which is all stored onto their cloud servers. While some Facebook and Google fanatics might argue that these companies are incredibly trustworthy and are using our data to provide us with better services, one question remains. What happens during a data breach? The “free” web-based services and apps that we use come at a very steep price which is the loss of privacy. But one must wonder, are we even entitled to privacy? Something similar happened when Equifax was hacked. The hack resulted in credit card data of thousands of people being leaked. Similar hacks have been coming at a greater rate than ever before. Earlier this year “WannaCry” ransomware cryptoworm targeted computers running Microsoft Windows by encrypting data and demanding ransom payments in Bitcoins and was shortly followed by a similar attack called the Petya ransomware attack.
Cloud is currently being used as a way to store and analyze big data, but in the future, cloud computing is predicted to evolve from data analytics to deep learning. Machine learning is the next level of programming which will be a big part of cloud computing. This will allow companies to go through and analyze data without much human effort. It will be able to understand complex concepts such as chaos theory and neural interactions and make decisions based on what the users want them to do, allowing developers to focus on creating new and innovative applications.
Storing data locally may seem too old school to some people, but the chances of things going wrong with cloud computing are exponential. Data breaches cost companies millions of dollars. Is going back to the old days of writing things on paper, using analog calculators and human resources to process data the safest way to go about things? Maybe not, but neither is the decision to hand your life and money to someone else on the internet.
