Challenges for the Cloud

The biggest challenges these companies face are secure data storage, highspeed
access to the Internet, and standardization. Storing large amounts of
data that is oriented around user privacy, identity, and application-specific
preferences in centralized locations raises many concerns about data protection.
These concerns, in turn, give rise to questions regarding the legal
framework that should be implemented for a cloud-oriented environment.
Another challenge to the cloud computing model is the fact that broadband
penetration in the United States remains far behind that of many other
countries in Europe and Asia. Cloud computing is untenable without highspeed
connections (both wired and wireless). Unless broadband speeds are
available, cloud computing services cannot be made widely accessible.
Finally, technical standards used for implementation of the various computer
systems and applications necessary to make cloud computing work
have still not been completely defined, publicly reviewed, and ratified by an
oversight body. Even the consortiums that are forming need to get past that
hurdle at some point, and until that happens, progress on new products will
likely move at a snail’s pace.

Aside from the challenges discussed in the previous paragraph, the reliability
of cloud computing has recently been a controversial topic in technology
circles. Because of the public availability of a cloud environment,
problems that occur in the cloud tend to receive lots of public exposure.
Unlike problems that occur in enterprise environments, which often can be
contained without publicity, even when only a few cloud computing users
have problems, it makes headlines.
In October 2008, Google published an article online that discussed the
lessons learned from hosting over a million business customers in the cloud
computing model.

Google‘s personnel measure availability as the average
uptime per user based on server-side error rates. They believe this reliability
metric allows a true side-by-side comparison with other solutions. Their measurements are made for every server request for every user, every
moment of every day, and even a single millisecond delay is logged. Google
analyzed data collected over the previous year and discovered that their
Gmail application was available to everyone more than 99.9% of the time.
One might ask how a 99.9% reliability metric compares to conventional
approaches used for business email. According to the research firm
Radicati Group,
companies with on-premises email solutions averaged
from 30 to 60 minutes of unscheduled downtime and an additional 36 to
90 minutes of planned downtime per month, compared to 10 to 15 minutes
of downtime with Gmail. Based on analysis of these findings, Google
claims that for unplanned outages, Gmail is twice as reliable as a Novell
GroupWise solution and four times more reliable than a Microsoft
Exchange-based solution, both of which require companies to maintain an
internal infrastructure themselves. It stands to reason that higher reliability
will translate to higher employee productivity. Google discovered that
Gmail is more than four times as reliable as the Novell GroupWise solution
and 10 times more reliable than an Exchange-based solution when you factor
in planned outages inherent in on-premises messaging platforms.
Based on these findings, Google was confident enough to announce
publicly in October 2008 that the 99.9% service-level agreement offered to
their Premier Edition customers using Gmail would be extended to Google
Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Talk. Since more than a
million businesses use Google Apps to run their businesses, Google has
made a series of commitments to improve communications with customers
during any outages and to make all issues visible and transparent through
open user groups. Since Google itself runs on its Google Apps platform, the
commitment they have made has teeth, and I am a strong advocate of “eating
your own dog food.” Google leads the industry in evolving the cloud
computing model to become a part of what is being called Web 3.0—the
next generation of Internet.

In the following chapters, we will discuss the evolution of computing
from a historical perspective, focusing primarily on those advances that led
to the development of cloud computing. We will discuss in detail some of
the more critical components that are necessary to make the cloud computing paradigm feasible. Standardization is a crucial factor in gaining
widespread adoption of the cloud computing model, and there are many
different standards that need to be finalized before cloud computing
becomes a mainstream method of computing for the masses. This book
will look at those various standards based on the use and implementation
issues surrounding cloud computing. Management of the infrastructure
that is maintained by cloud computing service providers will also be discussed.
As with any IT, there are legal considerations that must be
addressed to properly protect user data and mitigate corporate liability, and
we will cover some of the more significant legal issues and even some of the
philosophical issues that will most likely not be resolved without adoption
of a legal framework. Finally, this book will take a hard look at some of the
cloud computing vendors that have had significant success and examine
what they have done and how their achievements have helped to shape
cloud computing. 40