[Discuss] The pervasive "cloud"

[Jerry Feldman]

One of the new buzz words in our vocabulary is "cloud". According to an
IBM senior VP a cloud is just another name for data on a mainframe the
way it used to be.

Today cloud is in. We use tools to backup our data to a "cloud", we can
do many other things using a cloud as we would a HD.
There are some good and bad things about a cloud:
1. The most important thing is WHO is managing the cloud. Do you trust
them with your data. (you certainly can encrypt).
2. related to who, what happens if the cloud provider goes down for a
long period. Or, fails financially.
3. Unlike your local hard drive, the government can snoop on your data

Since just about everyone is a cloud provider these days it is probably
a worthwhile discussion. There are some people here that avoid clouds
like the plague. Android phones use Google's cloud. iPhone AFAIK, does
not use a cloud. We all know about the Megaupload fiasco last year. If
you use a backup service, where does that service host your data. Is it
on servers they own, is it on a third party server that they lease.
Another issue is the integrity of the data. What happens if they lose
the physical media your data is on. Is your data gone. Do they use a
form of mirroring or replication to another server.

I know we are going to get a lot of opinions on this. But, we are also
going to get some very knowledgeable answers.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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