Forecast: Reluctance, Giving Way to Clouds
Most mid-sized to larger organizations, according to one recent survey, will be moving to cloud computing the next couple of years. Keeping the “trust but verify” philosophy in mind, these companies say they will start with their non-mission-critical applications…and expand once they’ve proven it works.
That’s the big knock against cloud computing these days, the what-if scenario. What if the cloud provider loses my data? What if it isn’t kept secure? What if I can’t get to it as quickly as I need it? Or worst, case, what if the cloud dies?
Understandable concerns, but ones that will certainly fade as cloud computing proves its reliability and security, on top of its already proven convenience. Not only is working in the cloud becoming more common, but it is taking on a greater role in how we interact. It is growing in intelligence, paving the way for the devices we use to access it to become less intelligent. Yes, that’s right …less intelligent.
Example: Leave your mobile device on the train or the plane today, and see how your life slams into a wall. But if all your vital data is stored in the cloud and the device goes missing, you just get a new device, reconnect to the cloud, and your life interruption is measured in hours, not days. This isn’t exactly magic; a lot of this functionality can already be found in wireless devices like the Palm Pre today.
Still, you don’t have to be a Luddite to have some concerns about the cloud. Let’s be honest … the cloud is subject to the same risks as any other element of technology. Thanks to incredibly high degrees of redundancy and survivability, these risks are reduced to a minuscule level … yet still never entirely eliminated (just ask T-Mobile/MSN). So security, redundancy, control, are all issues to consider carefully before you move to the cloud or put valuable confidential data there.
The key to understanding the future of the cloud is to recognize that it is much more than just a process. The idea of “remote” computing is that you ask a question on your desktop, it goes out for processing at the distant site, and you get the result back. But now the nature of the network is changing such that this is no longer a simple transactional process. Now everything is occurring within the network, so it becomes a question of the best ways to interface with that network.
There’s no doubt that the cloud is, even as you read this, growing and expanding in importance. What Sprint as a provider needs to do now is ensure that the network provides the means to guarantee users the optimal cloud service experience. Whether the access is via Mobile Integration or SIP Trunking or something else, the network will be the focal point, and service providers must be able to deliver on the cloud’s promise.
-Steve
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