Cloud confusion and security concerns

Looks like cloud computing is the hot topic around the water cooler over at CIO.com.au. 

Another article about cloud computing. This one is commentry on a poll about cloud computing. Top of the list of concerns was security, which the author then makes fun of. The example is given is if a CIO is happy to give their credit card number to Amazon or do business with Google for advertising then is it fair to not trust the security of the cloud?

Well I think this view may be taking light of the differences. Its one thing to order a book, its another thing to place your entire customer based details with an external party. If someone steels your credit card number the damage and liability is really not that great. What if somone had access to your entire customer base, that could cause an IT manager some real headaches. 

I think its fair that IT managers should be concerned about security with the cloud. If the concern is valid then this assists the service providers to build and explain the data protection polocies and practices in such a way that these concerns can be aleviated.

The enthusiasim of Lynch is great, I too see a large future of cloud computing in its various forms, however this quote felt a little shock jock to me.

The Web has profoundly changed the way we consume information and now, with Software as a Service, the way we contribute and update information as well. As such, I have to believe the days are numbered for the alarming 42 percent who checked off "no." It was even more alarming that 30 percent said cloud computing wasn't on their technology road map at all.

30% of CIOs have probably not got a good virus strategy in place, or a DR solution,. Yes, cloud computing may be a great way to achieve some of these with less pain. But a lot of organisations I meet with have some really large issues with applications and data. Even if we look at the SaaS version of the cloud computing. If you are a manufacturing company and your big issues is your custom application that runs your business, you are probably not going to find a SaaS offering that you can quickly transition your business rules and data to.

I really think we need to start with some more descriptive terms for cloud computing. Are we thinking SaaS, or compute Cloud, or hosting or middle layer services such as elastic storage from EC2 that do nothing unless you integrate it into your applications. 

Somehow I feel with all the hype on cloud at the moment the cloud is going to get gray for a while. However during 2009 I think the big gray cloud is going to break into a few seperate clouds which will each be all fluffy and white.