A Victim of the Cloud!

While flipping through the news, I came across this story:

Megaupload shutdown upends the work of a Regina IT worker

A victim of the cloud!

What can I say? It's unfortunate for the victim to lose access to all his information, especially his work-related information. He's surely not the only person using this service for legitimate reasons. At the same time, he exposed himself to the hegemony of a single provider, with no backup plan. He let himself be seduced by the advantages of the cloud without taking the necessary precautions, such as keeping a backup copy of his information. The casualness that comes with using the cloud will be the biggest problem individuals and companies have to face in the future.

Without a proper analysis of your needs and of the services offered by the cloud, it is not possible to make an informed decision. And for those who think they'll save big bucks, studies are starting to come out showing that the savings are generally slim and don't always justify the loss of control that comes with moving to the cloud. It may be better to take a page from the operating models of the big cloud providers rather than migrating your information to the cloud. Simply putting better automation of operations in place will deliver savings as attractive as moving to the cloud.

This example also highlights the consequences that legislation like SOPA and PIPA could have. Public pressure managed to push them back, but it's only a matter of time before the big American lobbies come back for more power to protect copyright, at the cost of eroding individual rights.

For those riding the wave of novelty, the concept of cloud computing has existed since the dawn of computing. It was called a mainframe and terminals. It's not as sexy as a website, but it's still the same concept. As for the modern implementation of the cloud, Hotmail (founded in 1996!) is one of the examples that predates the whole hype cycle around the cloud ;-)