41–50 of 67 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you look at Gmail though, one of the most successful SaaS apps, its great value for small businesses. Many don't pay for it.
Not free for anyone anymore: http://www.wired.com/business/2012/12/free-google-apps/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
His argument seems to boil down to 'give us all your data because any concerns you have are just insane!'. It really irks me to see someone dismiss privacy and security concerns with such derision. It's also not just companies who should be concerned. I think the growing unease in the EU about US access to cloud service data is only going to get more serious.
You haven't worked in corporate IT I gather? Security and Privacy are at the bottom of the list when it comes to most businesses IT expenditure.
They may be good, but naturally introduces more attack vectors into many applications.
My nicely firewalled and audited application would become exposed to an undetermined number of people I have never met. e.g. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369188,00.asp . It only takes one rogue person and you have a problem.
My application has 5 trusted people. It would be interesting to know the additional number of people you are implicitly trusting by using a cloud service. 100?
"This thinking is backwards. If you care about the reliability, security, and the protection of your data, then you should entrust it to those who are most capable of managing it. If you believe you can match the capabilities and rigor of Google’s Security Operations team, I wish you well." They may be good, but naturally introduces more attack vectors into many applications. My nicely firewalled and audited applicat…
The only beef I have with cloud/VPS hosting is the price. Conveniently, the data center I've worked with for years[1] supports a hybrid setup, where you can use their cloud hosting combined with coloed physical hardware all in the same VLAN. It's hugely effective, since I can have physical hardware there to deal with the high-load/high-memory stuff there (like database servers) affordably, while at the same time, usi…
The only beef I have with cloud/VPS hosting is the price. Conveniently, the data center I've worked with for years[1] supports a hybrid setup, where you can use their cloud hosting combined with coloed physical hardware all in the same VLAN. It's hugely effective, since I can have physical hardware there to deal with the high-load/high-memory stuff there (like database servers) affordably, while at the same time, usi…
Are you considering you loss of time/freedom in that cost analysis? I get that cloud doesn't always make sense in every situation, but in a lot of cases people don't take into consideration these other factors (loss time managing/maintaining hardware, actual hardware costs, etc) when making the decision.
The cloud vs colo discussions have been done before on HN, but I still say the decision of one versus the other basically boils down to a relatively simple if-else/switch statement: If size of company is small and no sysadmins, cloud. If size of company is medium and sysadmins then cloud or colo based on due-diligence. If size of company is large and sysadmins and you need very high uptime then colo (Unless you're willing to spend a gazillion dollars for several access zones on EC2). Obviously there are going to be lots of if/else chains but you get my drift I imagine.
Now if you're a small start-up and have a likely outcome of tons of scaling needed in short order, your best bet might very well be scaling with the cloud and moving to hardware when you're more established (and if it makes sense from a cost benefit analysis).
Insanity #4; Your data could be accessed by the country the cloud host resides in. Oh, wait, that's not insane, it's the opposite. It would rather be insane to give a government that's known for wanting access to everything–legal or not– like the US your sensitive data.
To put it bluntly, Google has assembled the greatest collection of computer science talent in the world. Similarly Amazon has a multi-year lead in delivering compute power by the drop, with which it’s happy to provide to you with the single-digit gross margins of a successful retailer. Your IT organization simply doesn’t rate at this level. Maybe not, but it doesn't need to. Creating, maintaining, and fixing giant cl…
The tl;dr version: Cloud services have exogenous risks that you can't control but trying to avoid them is wrong. Absolutely false! If your company stands to lose $10,000/hr for every hour it's not operating (and that's a LOT of businesses) then the idea that "oh we'll just trust Amazon for this, what could possibly go wrong?!" is fairly short-sighted. Yes Amazon will work to fix things as fast as they possibly can bu…
And how much des the alternative cost? I'm not even sure what the alternative is, building your own data center?
Or data centers, plural.
Now, seriously, if you can beat their reliability, you are in the wrong business. I'll pay you to host my services.
However as a professional I can envision many Black Swan type events that would bring down the cloud. Asking Google et al about the quality and safety of the cloud is akin to asking your drug dealer about the quality of the drugs you are buying.
That is not to say that the cloud and complex derivatives should be avoided. However on should always hedge their bets.