Is the enterprise ready for cloud computing?

TalkBack 3 of 5:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

RE: Is the enterprise ready for cloud computing?

All of this article sounds very high minded. Very cheerful and leading to a bright future.But reality is seldom so bright. Lets face it, Enterprise businesses are in business to make a profit. Cutting costs is great for the bottom line but when they lose money due to application or data downtime you start to feel the pain of not having much control over your own business. Also Enterprise likes to keep secrets. Large pharmaceutical companies do not want their competitors downloading their newest pill formula directly from Google docs. They don't want the Federal government to get their financial information and have the federal government figure out that the Enterprise is an American company that doesn't pay Federal income tax. A lot of Enterprise level corporations pay big money to avoid income tax and they don't want this type of information in a non-secure environment.
Then there are lawsuit issues. I will sue the company that sells my health records to my potential employer. I may not win the case but I guarantee I will not be alone and eventually my rights to have my health records to be held private will either be stripped away or enforced legally. If it is stripped away, that is a whole other conversation.

In summary No, Enterprise is not ready for the Cloud. It won't be until the Cloud can guarantee Enterprise profitability both in the short term and the long term. The Cloud will need to guarantee the same level of protection as an isolated LAN can provide.

Further more even using encrypted gateways just pushes the cost of IT into cost of encryption. Instead of spending millions on IT you will have to spend millions in the the latest encryption and security measures. Instead of managing a network or applications you will be managing vendor relationships at no cost savings to your company. A team at the University of Rochester has recently shown that quantum waves can be partially observed and preserve their information. Therefore even quantum encryption can be broken. Isolation and direct control are the best tools currently. They are not perfect but they are better than what the Cloud offers now.

Remember:
*Data Ownership
*Direct access to main techsupport
*Working data back up strategies
*Viable exit strategies when vendors leave the relationship
*Encrypted data transmission
*Encrypted data storage
*Long term data access
*Long term data manipulation

These issues are important and won't be addressed until a major corporation gets burned and creates a multi-billion dollar lawsuit. Then things will become closer to moving to the Cloud

Posted by: mr1972   Posted on: 08/19/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Busting the myths about QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions and IBM Smart Business IBM So you already know there aren't actually any alligators in the New York ... Download Now
• The Impact of Virtualization Software on Operating Environments VMware Today's use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to ... Download Now
• Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More? A Few Small Changes May Dramatically Increase Your Efficiency VMware Companies have rapidly adopted server virtualization over the past few ... Download Now