Cloudy Skies

When we say someone has their "head in the clouds," it's generally not seen as a compliment.  It means they're not particularly serious about what's going on around them, they have no sense of reality, they're even a bit "scatterbrained."

Now let's examine the concept of "cloud computing," a phrase we will hear with continuing frequency as our connected planet continues to evolve.  Basically, the cloud is what the Internet has become, a huge network of shared resources that moves much of the hardware, software, and responsibility away from the individual users.  This results in more reliability, ease of use, greater storage capacity, and decreased costs.  These are obviously all positive developments.  But in order to avoid losing our heads in this cloud, we need to look at and prepare for the risks attached to it.

In the early days of the net, there was a lot of do-it-yourself activity with regards to setting up connectivity.  Anyone from the age of 11 to 85 could be expected to get a machine, set up an operating system, obtain a connection of some sort, and install various services based on what exactly they wanted to do.  Some would set up their own UNIX shells that others could login to, some might run websites out of their homes, still others would run USENET news feeds, Internet Relay Chat servers, the list went on and on.  Speed was a sign of status.  If you were able to get faster service to your location, you moved up a few pegs in the eyes of your peers.  In a way, it was equivalent to everyone being involved in building and upgrading their own cars, doing their own repairs, getting their own equipment, and learning a great deal in the process.

Obviously, not all of us had the time or inclination for this.  So it was inevitable that technology needed to evolve to the degree where just about anybody could get the services they wanted without actually having to set them up or know precisely how they worked.  Instead of running a server out of your home or office, using the services of a data center was more stable and economical.  Rather than managing your own email, using a centralized third-party became more common.  Websites could be run remotely without even investing in a machine through virtual hosting.  Social networking also brought people to central points of contact, which obviously made them more effective.

Initially, these two worlds existed side-by-side.  There were the do-it-yourselfers and then there were the masses.  Naturally, a degree of derision was reserved for those who emailed or connected to an IRC server through a mass appeal host like AOL.  People who communicated solely through a service such as Hotmail were generally not seen as the most technically adept, even though this may have been the only way they could connect in the first place.

In recent years, we've seen a real transformation as capacity, speed, and functionality of cloud computing have all improved dramatically.  Why keep a server at your house and have to deal with connectivity issues when you could park it remotely and have it always be reachable?  Why operate your own mail server when Gmail can do it more efficiently and with great amounts of free storage?  Why run your own chat system when everyone is on Facebook and Twitter?  To continue the car analogy, we've slowly seen those people who were doing their own repairs and maintenance start taking their cars to the dealer instead.  Easier, quicker, and more professional.

So what are the risks in this?  Mostly, it's a lack of control.  Here are some examples:

• While Gmail certainly does a better job of sending and receiving mail than most of us setting up a Linux box over a copper connection, the fact is that they have legal possession of your email on their servers.  In fact, the words in your email are scanned so that you can receive advertising that may be relevant to your interests.
• When you have your website in someone else's colocation facility, you won's be the first to know when some entity serves notice to shut it down for one reason or another.  You may just find yourself cut off.  In more serious cases, the authorities can grab your stuff with a mere subpoena to the company, rather than having to get a search warrant and come visit your house.
• If something bad happens to one of these companies that you've entrusted with your online presence (bankruptcies, fires, legal problems), you can find yourself adversely affected by someone else's drama.  Remember, you can't really control what's not in your possession.
• The cloud makes it easier for people to collaborate on projects by sharing documents online.  But such web-based applications also make it easier for outsiders to gain full access to these projects, since one person's poor security habits can put everyone at risk.  Many times, this simply isn't thought through and all kinds of embarrassing things wind up happening as a result.

Apart from the control and security issues, cloud computing makes someone more of a consumer than a developer by default.  It's likely you are now forced to use hardware that technically doesn't belong to you (such as a cable modem) and which you can't fully access even though you have possession of it.  Running your own website is forbidden on most cable modem connections and newer Fios setups routinely block port 80.  While it's a trivial issue to get around many of these restrictions for those who are so motivated and who have the skills, most people will wind up paying one of the giant providers, playing by their rules, and giving up control.

Even after yielding this much, we may find ourselves increasingly at the whim of giant companies, more so than ever before.  Emerging smart phones can be forbidden from running software that either the manufacturer or phone company doesn't approve of.  Their reasoning may make sense (security issues), it may be none of their damn business (forbidding "immoral" video games), or it may be for completely selfish reasons (Apple not allowing a Google Voice app to be installed on their iPhones).  Or something you bought electronically can be "taken back" without even letting you know.  Last year, Amazon did just this to customers who had purchased electronic books on its Kindle service when they ran into a legal issue with the books' distribution.  In an almost too perfect irony, the titles in question were George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984.  There are numerous other such examples that all point to the same conclusion: consumers run the risk of becoming almost irrelevant if they simply coast along and accept it all without question.

We need to be clear.  It's still possible and easy to use the net as individuals.  We can be creative and reach the entire world.  What's disappearing is the ease with which we can do this while not being somehow under a much larger entity's wing.  If you can run your own network internally, keep your email off of any machine you don't have physical access to, and not be forced to have a monopolistic phone or cable company as your provider, then you have a degree of autonomy that seems to be vanishing for many of us, oftentimes without an argument because of the convenience factor.

But even if you don't have the need to be completely independent of the cloud and the prospect of your data residing under someone else's roof doesn't disturb you, it's vitally important that you at least be prepared in the event of some sort of a disruption or failure.  Just as we would advise people to always make backups of any data they possess, we must stress the importance of doing the same thing with data entrusted to outside companies.  Just because they are big and professional, there's no reason to believe that they will be able to safeguard what's important to you, nor that it's particularly high on their priority list.

Every technological advance carries with it certain advantages and potential regressions, as we have mentioned in these pages before.  In order to really benefit from what cloud computing can do, we need to analyze its uses and abuses with our feet firmly on the ground.