Cloud Part II: Everyone Is Showing Their aaS

So, as I fight off the impending turkey coma, I have a choice to make: I can go out and start that yearly tradition of hunting down the blown bulb in that endless string of holiday lights or sit by the fire and wax technical listening to music from a time when...well...music didn't suck ;) I choose #2. If my words begin to decay into an incoherent dribble, know that I have succumbed to tryptophan and will return after a short nap. Meanwhile, if you wish to have a soundtrack to this blog, feel free (and safe to) click here. Not as fun as the Dark Side of Oz, but still good toe tapping. Dark Side of Oz you say? Ha! Call it a holiday gift for those of you who are unaware.  You can read about it here or just go here to listen to it. Be sure to give it at least 10 minutes. Intended or coincidence? You be the judge. Don't be gone too long though.

And if I say to you tomorrow. Take my hand, child, come with me. It's to a castle I will take you, where what's to be, they say will be
- Led Zeppelin

Whole Lotta Love

Cloud computing: the head-scratching catchphrase of 2012. Most of you don't really know what it means. Hell, I sometimes say "huh?" when I hear someone else's definition of what it is or what it should be. Or better yet, what is and what should never be (thanks Led Zeppelin). What's funny is knowing that most of you are using the cloud even now and are perhaps unaware you are doing so in daily life. Better yet, you didn't even know it was called the cloud. So what is it really? Well, cloud is most often associated with something you enjoy using which, for the most part, lives on the Internet. Things like Pandora, Dropbox, Salesforce.com and Office365. These products are lumped into this nice, neat bucket called Software as a Service. Or, known by its Internet vernacular, SaaS. Seems easy enough to understand, right? SaaS means I can enjoy music just about everywhere I go, for little or no money (add commercial here). Ok, I see you get that. What you may not know is that the cloud goes beyond software per se. So, in addition to SaaS (Software As A Service), we also have HaaS (Hardware As A Service), PaaS (Platform As A Service) and my personal favorite GaaS (Girl As A Service).  Jeez. All of a sudden, it's now hip to show your "aas."

Thank You

Just about everything in our lives seems to be moving in the direction of  "a low monthly fee." Cloud services are so appealing because they were built from the ground up around this idea: Get you in the door with a service that works well, for nearly nothing. Then, give you the ability to enhance the service for a small, set monthly amount. Now, as the saying goes, "everyone is doing it." Do you remember what it used to be like to join a gym? The long-term contracts with no way out? Not any longer. Sorry, you still need to go to the gym. Yet, gym memberships have gone the way of data plans, NetFlix, and Spotify. Full access for a flat monthly fee; cancel at any time. Just how pervasive have these services become? Naturally, at this moment I am typing away on my laptop. Here is what else is going on at the same time: I am waiting on an email from Google regarding the Jellybean update for my phone. It will arrive via Gmail at some point (cloud email service). I have my wife's laptop sitting next to me, uploading 600 pictures to Snapfish (a cloud picture printing service), They will take these digital photos and, within about three or so days, print them on photo paper for a ridiculously cheap price and FedEx them to her so she can crop and paste them into an analog slideshow (aka a scrapbook). This is happening while I listen to an Eric Clapton show from 1970 that is streaming through Pandora (a cloud music service)  on my networked TV. As it happens, my phone has just informed me that it is going to bed. No, you didn't read that wrong.  At 10:00 each night, it uses GPS (with Google's mapping service) to check if I am at home. If so, it automatically places itself into night mode by turning the ring functions to silent (except for VIP calls and texts). See what I mean?

Ok, now think about the working world. Besides offering predictable spending, cloud offers flexibility. It gives small business access to big business software; software they could not afford due to the ginormous cost involved in building a network to run it. A small business could never afford to build a payroll processing system. Yet for a mere few bucks per employee, they can sign up for Intuit Payroll Services, and have direct deposit, payroll tax processing, 1040 and more…all on the Web and without paying for a single server, software, or accountant. Moreover, the software is always up-to-date and the servers maintained, as part of the monthly fee. Sound to good to be true? Let's see.

Heartbreaker

So I tell people all the time that there is a difference between risk and risky. Using computers is always a risk.  You COULD lose your work. You COULD spin out your hard drive. You COULD get hit by lightning making your pony tail stick straight up, break the light bulb above you, causing a short circuit that kills the power to your office, crashing your computer with two seconds left in the EBay auction for the Forest Gump running shoes that you were the lead bidder. Cloud is risky. It is the Wild West right now. Doesn't mean you can't use it. It means you need to clearly understand (and be willing to except) the riskiness of using cloud services.

Let's talk riskiness for a moment. First, there is the obvious: availability. No matter what Microsoft and Google would have you believe, their servers do go down. And while they don't see outages all the time, even infrequent ones have a very public and crippling affect (Office 365 outage...again) And of course, these services depend on your Internet access. Looking for the big boys to remind you about these "little" gotchas? Yea, keep waiting. The workaround is a fully installed desktop application (ie Office 2010) that links directly with their cloud services so you can continue to work on spreadsheets if the Internet is down or the cloud is "unavailable."

Next there is the issue of control. Say you are an individual working for a company and you decide there is some cloud-based service that you want to use. Let's suppose it's Dropbox; a fabulously useful cloud-based service. You know you are supposed to clear it with the IT guy. But right as rain, you suspect he will say "no" and will  pepper you with some meaningless technical gibberish. Perhaps it is true but to you it is verbally nauseating. After all, he doesn't have a clue about you job, your deadlines, your pressure. Besides how much can it really hurt and who will ever know? Oy! A user going rogue and using unsanctioned cloud-based services and software? If you are the IT guy, it is the equivalent of blasting a hole in the hull of a battleship. Loss of  control, exposure, and compromised security. "C'mon Rick, really? That bad?" Yes, yes it is. Try this, due to using Dropbox, and the ease by which info can be sent off the network virtually unchecked, your company fails a key compliance audit, loses its certification and forfeits a sizable contract. And while you may be able to regain the certification, the contract (and the trust that goes with it) is forever obliterated. This is especially true if you are dealing with companies who exchange licensing, patent, classified  or accounting information. Oh, and remember that employee who wasn't so worried about his decision to "stick it to the man?" Yea, he won't have to worry too much since his job will evaporate just like the contract. My friends, this is the ugly side of SaaS. Until firewalls and threat management systems catch up, this scenario will play out more and more .

For a moment, let's play ostrich and pretend the cloud world is always sunny. Or is the sunny world a bit cloudy. When all else is forgotten, there is the elephant in the room: Legal. How will the law and privacy protection play into this stuff? And will the rulings truly hold water (finally got a pun in there)? This is not my area of expertise but I can't help but ask myself this question: Suppose you found yourself thrown into the judicial process. Will Google and Microsoft honor your privacy? Will they turn over your email and other data quicker than you can spell the word "warrant?" My guess is yes. We'll all need to watch for the zero case and see how it shakes down.

Ramble On

When it is all said and done, the adoption of cloud is just as much a human hurdle as it is a technological one. It is a shift in mindset. For consumers, it is just another in a long list of monthly charges that places the world into their hands. "Hey, if I can have all of my music on demand for $5.00/month, why should I buy music any longer." So it is ok if you are deprived of your music for a little while. For businesses, it is a tempting opportunity to level the playing field, placing small businessess somewhat on par with bigger ones. Yet, at the same time it is a very real leap of faith. See, there are no rules nor agreed-upon standards. Not really. And that makes people very nervous. I'm talking about IT people, business owner, and other C-level decision makers. No rules usually means best effort. Let me translate: we (meaning the cloud people) may sometimes not be able to give you access to your data due to an update gone bad. If we lose your data, we will make a reasonable effort to get it back…but no guarantees. Basically, our responsibility is limited to making our service, and your data available to you most all of the time (the key word here being most). And if we don't, we will credit you a month of service for your inconvenience.  Sound a bit harsh? That is the reality right now. Just read the fine print.

Bring It On Home

What do Mark Twain and the cloud have in common? Well, I will tell you. We are all very familiar with his literary contributions. What you may not have known was that Twain was a confessed foodie, with a particular  fondness for oysters. And he liked them prepared just about any way imaginable. Reminds me of the classic shrimp scene in Forest Gump. Anyway, for someone who was so serious about his eating, Twain was every bit as apathetic about his health, specifically staying in shape. He proclaimed, "When I feel the urge to exercise,  I will lay down and let the urge pass." He felt like he would get around to it eventually. Unfortunately, Twain died from a heart attack. In fact, he predicted that his life would essentially end as it began, with the passing of Halley's Comet. As it happened, he died a day after the comet came closest to Earth. I would never go as far as to suggest that ignoring the cloud could be hazardous to your health. However, it could be financially fatal to your business.

With my job, I often see the class warfare that exists between large and small companies, as it relates to each one's ability to deploy and maintain software and services to support their businesses. I see companies strive to remain lean yet effective; agile yet efficient; all the while realizing that competition now seems to be measured in inches instead of feet. The cloud is poised to change all that, offering businesses a truly robust set of services for a very affordable subscription. If you step back for a moment and think about it, cloud can enable competition between firms which, prior to its existence, simply could not compete.  All of us, consumers, IT and business people alike will just need to figure out the right place and practical use of cloud services. Real practical use. This can only happen once the risk is understood and mitigated. Kind of like understanding that proper eating plus exercise can reduce your chances of a heart attack.  

Guess I better go for a walk. And, so you know, Halley's Comet is not due to return until 2062.

Warm holiday greetings.