Cloud Backed By Former Sceptic in Car Analogy

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Cloud computing is an innovation plenty of companies are coming round to as a means of handling their data more efficiently, with improved rather than diminished security and plenty of capacity.

Whether it is the benefits of accessibility, offsite backup or the help it lends to attempts to bring about the paperless office, the appeal of cloud computing is clear enough to many enterprises, from small firms who want to work in a smart way to big organisations who want to ensure their vast array of data is managed well enough for people across the board to still be able to access it.

However, like any new technological innovation, there will always be a few luddites and sceptics around, just as there was in the famous case of Henry Ford being told by a man that the car would never take the place of horses.

It is to cars, however, that one former naysayer has turned in the process of changing his opinion about one particular aspect of the field – the hybrid cloud, ZDNet reports.

Analyst James Governor of RedMonk was that sceptic, who questioned whether the use of a combined system of public and private clouds was in any way advantageous to those who deployed such a dual approach.

Now, however, he believes the hybrid cloud is like a hybrid car – a system that makes the best of the available infrastructure while the gradual transition from one form of operating to another is undertaken. Electric vehicles, he noted, are still slightly lacking in battery life and there are limited battery charging stations available, while, of course, petrol and diesel fuel is readily available.

He described the Toyota Prius as "actually a pretty good halfway house," which makes use of both means of powering a car. This is analogous to traditional data centres that provide the necessary capacity through the hybrid cloud that the public or private cloud could not supply on its own.

He concluded: "On balance, maybe we shouldn't be so purist about cloud. Maybe the hybrid is a good thing; the Prius is representative of the idea that maybe hybrid makes sense."

The practicalities of hybrid clouds and cars aside, there are other concerns about the hybrid cloud and IT professionals have been discussing these at length.

Writing for CRN, marketing director for Comms-care Richard Eglon noted that this matter was a hot topic at the recent GigaOM event in London, with concerns over who is responsible for security. In theory the cloud should be safe as data is only accessible to those with the correct authorisation, but some concerns remain.

He explained: "Security is one of the driving reasons for people to move towards hybrid spaces, but the transition can cause real headaches. If data is stored in two different environments they more often than not have different security policies that need to be reviewed and enforced.

"Once public and private cloud overlap, regulation of the requirements becomes more difficult. The one that's public will be in the hands of a third party. Is that third party trustworthy with data? Does it adhere to the necessary industry standards?"

None of that means that there are not partnerships forming across the cloud. On the contrary, recent examples include the tie-up between Microsoft and AT&T, where the latter's customers can access the Microsoft hybrid Azure cloud platform. Indeed, Microsoft believes 70 per cent of firms will be using the hybrid model in some form by 2015.

Mr Eglon's own conclusion on this issue was that the biggest threat – he estimated it to be around 90 per cent – comes from the rogue insider. The individual who has access to the cloud may be the biggest threat.

This will always be a problem any company faces and cannot really deal with; for instance, the firm with a low-tech data storage system will be just as vulnerable to having paperwork misfiled or maliciously destroyed, while anyone with a computer system of whatever kind will be at risk of that staff member deleting or altering data, or cancelling a financial transaction.

For such internal threats, Mr Eglon suggested, there are "no effective prevention measures". For everything else, the hybrid cloud may be very safe.

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