Cloud Computing is a Trap

I never thought I’d see myself agreeing with Richard Stallman and I think his jibe that “Google's Gmail is "worse than stupidity" is a little OTT but I get where he’s coming from. He followed up by saying “users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party” going on to explain that control is something you risk losing by putting everything in the cloud.

Now…you’d sort of expect me to say this but the Software plus services approach gives you the best of both worlds. Choice. Control.

Anyway, I’m running out of the door for an early flight to Paris so will check the Techmeme coverage later and add more thoughts. Meantime, what do you think? If cloud just hype?

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 29, 2008
  Surely  he knows gmail has a pop and IMAP option? So it can be SaaS or S+S - it's your choice.

• Anonymous
  September 29, 2008
  I believe that the "trap" might be that as more and more of us use the cloud as part of our day to day working practices we become more dependend on  these"free" services, that may not always be free with the worsening "credit crunch", so unless we have back up plans we may find ourselves in difficult positions should the current models or services colpse over night. I can see governments bailing out backs but not start ups.

• Anonymous
  September 29, 2008
  I do think that there is a lot of hype right now surrounding cloud. Many corporates have spent the last few years with server consolidation projects and a general shift to virtualisation.  Cloud presents another big shift for them, with potential savings on virtual licensing costs that they currently have to pay. Microsoft, IBM, Dell and others are all working on their cloud offerings. However, we are looking at a good few years before the SaaS, or S+S  will become mainstream. It's too early right to judge right where big business will spend their cash. A loss of 'control' regarding your data or infrastructure, is not a new thing. Just ask all of those companies who have outsourced their infrastructures to the likes of Infosys, or Wipro.  Agreed, cloud services are somewhat different, but corporates are not as frightened as they once used to be at 'letting go'.  You better believe, the SLA's and OLA's will be water tight on how that data is kept, backed up and stored! Software + Services, as a platform, appears to differentiate Microsoft's cloud offerings quite well. The question is whether other vendors will innovate, or just rebrand their current web offerings and cover them with a little 'cloud spray' to compete?

• Anonymous
  September 29, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 30, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 30, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 30, 2008
  Using Gmail was a poor example. Email is worthless if it is only in your own hands. And the minute you click that Send button, you've lost control of who gets to see it because you don't know what email servers (and where) it will pass through. But control of data is an important consideration that is too easily dismissed when people compare cloud computing to electricity. The analogy may work for the processing power, but not for the data that the processing is for.

• Anonymous
  October 01, 2008
  you been reading The Big Switch Sharon?

• Anonymous
  October 01, 2008
  James - we're definitely talking more about cloud computing and will for sure at PDC but that is part of Software plus Services so the S+S term is definitely not going away

• Anonymous
  October 01, 2008
  fair point about Gmail having POP/IMAP but I think he was using that as a canonical example of cloud computing/SaaS