Critical Notes on Cloud Computing

This would be my third and final post on the introduction of cloud computing. In previous two posts, I introduced the basic concepts and technologies associated with cloud computing, various advantages of cloud computing and micro and macro economic impacts that cloud computing can potentially generate. Now let us analyze this technology critically to find out some of the disadvantages and other critical issues associated with cloud computing and the whether providers can overcome such issues in the future.

Recently Amazon's EC2 faced outage in its Virginia data center that affected more than 70 clients including Reddit, Quora and New York Times ((http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/22/technology/amazon_ec2_cloud_outage/index.htm). Amazon links many of its data centers together to protect customers from an isolated failures. Such a strategy should ensure a downtime of 4.4 hours. But the recent outage has lasted for 36 hours. Amazon explained that a 'networking event' caused many of Amazon's storage volumes to create self back-ups. Amazon's storage capacity was reduced in the process, which in turn, prevented clients from accessing the cloud. The details of Amazon's explanation can be found in the website http://aws.amazon.com/message/65648/.
Here is a picture that summarizes the basic infrastructure of Amazon's cloud services that I found  here: http://www.computescotland.com/network-online-power-outages-4231.php

This outage problem gives rise to a critical issue associated with cloud computing- Reliability. After reading my first two posts, you must have wondered with so much potential, why usage of cloud computing is not so wide spread yet. Here are some of the expert's opinion against cloud computing:

• Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, thinks that users should not give away their information to a third party.
• Larry Ellison, Founder of Oracle Corporation, thinks adoption of cloud computing is 'fashion driven'. You can listen to him in the following video:

The main criticisms against cloud computing have to do with privacy and ownership. Three most critical issues with cloud computing are:

• Reliability: When an application runs on a cloud server, the same server is being accessed by other customers at the same time. Because the interaction between client terminal and cloud is achieved over internet, depending on internet connectivity such a situation increases the probability of failure. The following charts from the site http://www.marketingautomationsoftware.com/blog/reliability-in-the-cloud-1060711/ summarizes the monthly downtime of email providers:

• Control: The users or customers of cloud computing services lose physical control over their own data and would have to trust the provider completely since the data is stored on providers' servers (http://minutiaeetal.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/three-critiques-of-cloud-computing/ ). Data is alterable, can be deleted with ease and can be locked out as we saw in case of Amazon's EC2. Such control issues are making some of the companies worrisome about the technology. 
• Security: The biggest criticism against cloud computing is security issues (http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~elaines/docs/ccsw.pdf ). If a hacker breaks through the firewall of the cloud, it would gain access to all of client data compared to a limited amount of data that is stored in a PC. Thus a hacker finds cloud more attractive than a PC. 

While such issues with cloud computing are legitimate, in my opinion they would be overcome in future. The industry is still in its nascent state and just like other emerging technologies, it is still discovering the problems that would affect the users. Such problems can be revealed only through usage over time and solutions would be developed accordingly. Some of most intelligent engineers and researchers all over the world are working to improve the technology to realize its full potential. With emerging problems will evolve innovative solution. An article by Chow, R. et al (http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~elaines/docs/ccsw.pdf) describes how information-centric security can eliminate many of the risks. Such an approach requires the data to be" self-describing and defending, regardless of its environment" and thus would not depend on third party or providers to ensures its integrity and security. 

Some of the issues have their origin in the attitude of users. Users need to trust the providers completely to adopt a particular cloud service. Many experts think, such trust issues will be resolved over time simply because providers would strive to ensure customer satisfaction. As the cloud industry matures, the intentions and service quality of the providers would be transparent enough for users to trust the providers' integrity. Take a look at the video below to see how experts feel about the trust issue:

As Forbes points out (http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgillis/2011/05/24/criticism-abounds-but-cloud-computing-is-here-to-stay/), the benefits of cloud computing is overwhelmingly more than the cost associated with the risk of cloud computing. Some isolated incidents such as the one with Amazon's EC2 is not intentional and inherent. Emerging technologies always face problem in the beginning because its new and untested. But over time and with increased usage such problems are usually detected and solved. 

Let me conclude this post by discussing why cloud computing could emerge as a marketable technology now, even though the concept of cloud computing existed since the 1960s. It has to do with emergence of supporting technologies and customer readiness. First of all, companies in all industry sectors uses information and communication technologies (ICT) either as their main business or to support their main lines of businesses. Growing dependence on ICT makes ICT expenditure a significant cost driver. Now companies are interested in cloud computing because of its potential as an ICT cost reducer. Increasing usage of smartphones and tablets increases demand of cloud computing among individual users as well. Thus there are enough demand in the market for cloud computing. Secondly, the success of cloud computing depends on several supporting technologies. Realization of high storage capacity with smaller sized chips, availability of high speed internet all over the world and power of virtualization enable cloud computing to be a sustainable and successful technology in this current era. 

My next series of posts will be about the particular benefits of cloud computing relevant to a specific industry. I will start with the business model of cloud computing service providers and later will move on to various user industries such as Financial Services, Communication, Internet Content Providers, Social Media and Healthcare.