Pushback on cloud computing: next year, 'Intelligent Fog'?

Is cloud computing a fad, destined to evaporate like a summer rain?

Regular readers of this blogsite may notice I tend to be favorable toward the cloud model. As with SOA, cloud offers great opportunities to access services, both from external and internal provider, versus building and maintaining these services your own domain.

However, many IT executives and professionals are leery of moving to cloud-based computing. Data security is a huge concern. Also, the viability of the cloud provider is always in question. There's the matter of unexpected downtime. Some readers recently voiced their concerns in recent talkback posts about cloud.

For example, in response to my recent post titled "Panel: too much to lose by moving to generic services and cloud?", one reader, Blackfalconsoftware, called cloud "another ridiculous 'Fad' in the IT Industry. As the reader put it:

"I have been in the IT field for over 35 years. And I have seen more fads, whims, and ideas come and go at the same rate that rain falls in a summer storm..."

Blackfalconsoftware compares cloud computing to "open economies," noting that "it has been documented and proven that closed economies fare better than open ones liable to the globalization of capital flows. Money can move into an open economy as fast as it can move out. Cloud Computing is very much an open economy except it deals in data instead of money. What CEO or CIO in their right mind would hand their data over to a third-party for storage and access thus giving up critical control over who is managing such data?"

Another reader, Pauliusp, picked up on the faddish aspect, saying that cloud computing is "the method of getting money from lemmings," adding that "next year we will be talking about something else -- 'Intelligent Fog' maybe?"

By the way, I really like that term, 'Intelligent Fog'...

Another reader, CobraA1, also castigates the current hype-ishness and faddishness of cloud computing, but puts the whole thing in long-term perspective:

"It's basically the same pattern I've seen all the time: New technology comes around, people clamor over it and predict it will replace the "old" tech, the old tech ends up being better than the new tech in some ways, and they end up side by side rather than as a complete replacement."

Cloud based computing will always be good at some things and bad at others, Jack adds. He lists some of the downsides of cloud computing. For example, cloud downtime is unpredictable. "I'd rather have five hours of downtime while the employees are asleep at night than 10 minutes of downtime while they are at work," he says. "It's debatable whether more downtime is really better if it's happening while people are work."

And, CobraA1 continues, "for real time stuff, local is always better than cloud based. There's always latency, even with a lot of bandwidth."

Still, the concern keeps coming around to data security. As Jack, owner of an architecture firm, puts it,"there is no way I am going place our data files in the cloud where we can't control access 24/7 and ensure its always available long term. How many tech companies have come and gone in the last 30 years?"

And reader Brutallyfrank adds some brutally direct questions, in response to my recent post about the federal government exploring cloud computing services, "What cloud is my data in? Who is maintaining it? Are they trustworthy? What happens to my data when the cloud vaporizes ...the company vaporizes? What happens if the cloud gets purchased by 'evildoers,' or worse, your competition? How fast can i retrieve my data from the cloud? How do I know my data is being backed up and stored securely by competent staff? Is my data being stored on a machine overseas in india somewhere where the access time to retrieve my data will be extremely slow?"

These issues are the same problems faced with SOA, the reader adds. "Right now, SOA sucks because it doesn't scale and the dependencies on other servers and the distance between your machine and all the dependent servers can be 'around the world.'"