I've been doing a lot of thinking about Cloud Computing lately. This was sparked, in large part, by Symantec's internal engineering conference, Cutting Edge, as well as a number of things I've been reading. Cloud Computing is shaping up to be one of the "next big things" that we are all going to be hearing a lot about over the next couple of years. In fact, Microsoft just announced "Azure," their cloud computing services platform.
Microsoft Azure is positioned to bring cloud computing to the development masses. Anyone will be able to write cloud-aware applications and run them hosted in Microsoft's data centers. Consider the consequences:
In the past, when you have chosen which software to purchase, one factor in your decision has certainly been whether or not you trust the software vendor. You wouldn't install an application on your home desktop or laptop unless you trusted the folks who wrote the software. Cloud computing adds another twist to this. As cloud computing grows in popularity more platforms like Azure appear. In the end, the majority of cloud-based applications will store their data (YOUR data) in the data centers of only a few large corporations. In this case, you have to worry not only about whether or not you trust the software writers but also whether or not you trust the corporation who will ultimately be storing your data. Will it be stored securely? Will they do a good enough job protecting it? The number of incidents of credit card theft from corporate data centers of the last few years is enough to give anyone concerns.
Software vendors will need to grapple with the same types of decisions as they decide which platform to build their cloud-based applications on.
So, as it turns out, cloud computing's most compelling feature (the ability to access your data anywhere, at any time, from any device) also introduces trust and privacy issues on a massive scale.
I'm hoping to do a lot more writing about cloud computing so let me know what you think. What excites you about cloud computing? What worries you? What applications do you want to see in the cloud? Which would you rather see stay rooted on the desktop?
I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say and responding.
