More and more, it seems, business and IT managers are being told that “Cloud Computing” is the wave of the future. We are being bombarded with salesman who want to explain this “new technology” to us, and show us why putting our applications in the cloud is a great way to improve services and cut cost. There are many critical considerations which are often not being discussed. It often boils down to asking the right questions. Do you know what to ask?

We’ll take a relatively non-technical look at some questions that should help you make a better decision.

“What is cloud computing?” The answer to this question can be boiled down to a very simple explanation, and makes many of the other questions fairly obvious. Traditionally,  a cloud is drawn in a network map or infrastructure diagram to indicate a WAN, or Internet, connection. The idea behind “the cloud” was to find a way to represent a single piece, or entire scope, of equipment and connections that were outside our realm of control (and concern). This is also the definition used by most salespeople. Cloud computing, in this sense, is moving your application, or processing, resources outside the scope of your own management. essentially, you are giving someone else the responsibility of managing you applications or data.

“Is this really something new?” No, it is not. This whole cloud computing buzz is just a new word for several different technologies which have existed for years. “Cloud Computing” is simply a buzz word, and a poor one at that (considering the fact that it is an exceptionally vague term). We have used off-site printing and processing services as long as we have had businesses, and sending large jobs out for processing has existed as long as the Internet has. The salesman always seem to forget that this is nothing new.

“Are you saying that cloud computing is a bad idea?” Actually, there are many cases where moving services “to the cloud” may be a good idea. You may be running applications that require significant processing power, or you could be running from a home office and need a more stable location for certain data or applications. There are numerous individual situations for which cloud computing could be beneficial.

With those answers out of the way, let’s move on to some questions for the salesman…

“Where is my data, and how is it stored?” The answer to this could be surprising. Before you send your data off to someone else, you should know where the data is stored and in what format.

• What format is your data stored in? If your data is stored in a proprietary format, you could incur some substantial costs if you ever decide to move your data somewhere else.
• How is you data stored? Is the physical redundancy of the data, and fail-over on the application server(s)?
• Where are the services physically hosted? Is it in a physically secure data center, or in some small office? The answer to this may not be what you think.
• Who owns the data? This question, while seemingly obvious, can have some surprising stipulations attached to it.

These questions may sound a little like paranoia until you look into the costs necessary to convert data from a proprietary format to an open one. You would also be surprised how many hits you get from doing a Google search for “data center flooded.” There is also a less obvious point in this question. If your data is stored in another location, does a power outage or some other minor catastrophe make your data inaccessible for an unknown period of time? What about a major catastrophe, such as an earthquake or a hurricane? This also leads to the next major question.

“What is the policy on responsibility for data security?” This is another one which can be broken down into several questions, and these ones can be real deal-breakers. Security of your data is critical for the future of your business, and yet these questions are rarely asked. A little time here is very well spent.

• Who is responsible for backing up the data, and where are the backups stored? These backups should be just as secure as the data, and should be off-site. Some companies even leave the responsibility of backing up the data to you.
• Who has access to your data? Is you data readable by their employees by default? Do they run background checks on their employees before they are allowed near your data? Are their employees properly trained how to handle your data?
• Who is responsible for data loss, or a security breach? Surprisingly, very few people remember to ask this one. If your data is lost or stolen, who gets nailed with the lawsuit? Do they have a rider, or other means of protecting your company if they lose your customers data, or worse yet, if a disgruntled employee sells it?

These questions should help to give you a better picture of what you are being sold. Of course, I don’t need think I need to remind you that the answers only mean something if they are in writing.

Let’s move on to the questions to ask yourself (or someone other than the salesman).

“How critical are these services to my businesses operation?” Before moving these service out into the wild, you may want to think of some of the ways it could affect you. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• How much would downtime cost me for this service? If you cannot function without this service, then a problem with your Internet connection, or with theirs, would put you out of business. Think of a call-center losing it’s phones, or a courier service not having access to it’s maps or per-diem rates. this would be catastrophic to them. Your application could mean the same the same thing to you.
• How much time do my employees spend on this service? If this application is being used constantly (i.e. data entry, order processing, control data) then even a small decrease in efficiency would raise costs considerably. We often take for granted that the Internet is there. Have you ever had your connection suddenly exhibit loss or sluggishness? If it suddenly takes thirty seconds to display a web-page that would normally display in two, how much would this affect an employee who normally enters 25 orders per hour?
• How much will the increased traffic cost? You may save administration costs, and even hardware costs, by moving this application to the cloud; However, you could start to see a significant increase in data costs if you exceed your bandwidth. It may be worth doing the numbers on this before making the leap to off-site applications.

Unfortunately, I cannot give you an answer as to whether you should move your application(s) into the cloud or not, but these questions should help you make a more informed decision.

I am not sure what motivated her to try this, but I told her that her methods were a little dubious, and gave my opinion. since I told her that she should debate this issue in the public, and not try to slip amendments in behind closed doors, it is only fair to do the same. here is the text of my email to her, in verbatim…

Mrs Feinstein,

It has come to my attention that you are attempting to include language in the Stimulus bill which would affect the neutrality of the internet. reading the proposal for amendment, a few things very quickly become quite clear. Aside from the fact that there is no effective method for monitoring network traffic for objectionable material (you could do some reading about Australia’s numerous failed attempts at this), this is MOST DEFINITELY NOT a stimulus issue.

I, and thousands of other watchdogs, will be certain to make this as obvious as possible to the public. I will also be certain to center it in the interests of the tens of thousands of people in your state who, as fellow IT professionals, would be extremely dissatisfied with the possible requirements to spend countless hours and large sums of money (which they cannot afford to spend in this economy) to attempt to comply with a ridiculous set of regulations which have very little probability of success in controlling the flow of illegal materials and a very high probability of adversely affecting almost all legitimate traffic.

This is neither an effective piece of legislation, nor a good way to remain in office. If you are honestly concerned about the issue of net neutrality, please have the courage to debate the issue in public where it can come under the light of truth, and succeed (or fail) on it’s true merit. Doing this in the cover of committee, and amending it to unrelated bills, will do nothing but recast the issue as scandal.

I will attempt to assist you in moving your concern into the public forum by posting a copy of this email on my website. feel free to comment there if you would like.

Thank You,

Kenneth C Coe, Jr

www.coehome.com

Aside from typographical and grammatical errors, I would always recommend that people copy my response. That is to say, that we should always contact our representatives when we see an issue that affects us, not that you should just repeat whatever I say (of course.) I will continue to watch our representatives actions, and to respond to them. I will also continue to attempt to get my viewers to do the same…

One of the most obvious considerations for the new administration is broadband access and the digital backbone. Why is broadband so important? As FCC chairman Kevin Martin states in “Engine of Productivity and Innovation” (Korea Times – 6/17/2008), “The ability to share increasing amounts of information, at greater and greater speeds, increases productivity, facilitates commerce and helps drive innovation.” Information technology science has advanced at an astounding pace since the construction of Eniac in 1946. Technology is now an integral part of finance and commerce, education and employment, healthcare, and almost every other facet of our lives. It is very important that the backbone of the internet keeps pace with any digital development.

Just as obvious to experts, but less so to the general public, is information security. The attacks on September 11, 2001 had a devastating impact on the economy. An attack on our digital infrastructure, however, could have an even larger impact, as described in TechNewsWorld.com’s “CyberWarfare”. Some progress has been made toward adapting new policies and methods to counter a cyber-offensive through the Department of Homeland Security\’s “Cyber Storm Project”, but a lot of work still needs to be done. Security in the digital world is a moving target, and requires continual effort. This will be a critical component of any future digital infrastructure policy.

An area which requires significant attention is the availability and format of the Federal Government’s information architecture. We have made significant progress over the last few years toward digitizing the Governments’ public access through the Federal Information Portal, usa.gov. A tremendous amount of forms and data are available to the public through this medium. Many of the publics’ needs can be met at this portal to some degree, but a lot of work is still ahead. One impressive, but underdeveloped, section of usa.gov is the RSS feed page. This section of the portal could be immensely beneficial to the people. For example, it could let you subscribe to the feed for your districts’ representatives to keep track of their actions, or watch the feed for a particular issue which affects and/or interests you. We would also benefit from integration of some of the other newer technologies used on the internet today, for example the ability to send requests by topic or by task to multiple sources and receive a single response with the information we need (online information requests save Tampa, FL a fortune)or to customize the portal to our needs similar to iGoogle.

These same wonderful technologies could go a long way in developing transparency in government, but would require standardization of the data formats used by our government. This is what I would consider the most important issue with regard to federal information management. Using a standard, and open, semantic data management system would help to solve multiple issues facing our next administration. The ability to tag data by subject would aid the government (and it’s people) in communicating more efficiently. Anyone able to search available material by subject could easily aggregate the data into a single source (possibly an RSS feed) and review all actions on a given topic.

The last area I would add to the new Administration’s list is Total Cost of Operations. Our Federal Government is a very large institution, consisting of tens of thousands of systems. Licensing and implementation costs are staggering at this scale. The new Administration should not discredit any ideas for new development. One of considerable interest to me would be the implementation of more open-source projects and solutions. This could save billions in licensing costs, and give the Federal government the ability to tailor its’ solution to it’s needs

This is by no means a complete list of goals for the administrations new CTO, but is a good start toward their stated goal. Hopefully, we will see some of them start to develop.