"The cloud hazard no one talks about"

September 19, 2011 By Paul Venezia | InfoWorld

A Comment...

Information management is like transportation.

Mass-transit only works well in very populous areas and with lots of redundancy in the system. That's why most people drive cars.

Cloud computing is "mass-transit" for information.

Local processing is like having your own car.

Cloud computing is a solution desperately in search of a problem. Its marketing appeals to the near-sighted, the cheapskates, the people who never think about disaster planning and have to be rescued, at great risk to others, when it happens.

Reliable systems are built by minimizing variables and risks.

Functionality should be implemented as close to the user as technology allows. Anything above first level (i.e. desktop, laptop, phone, etc.) should be asynchronous with alternatives if all the redundant links are down.

Cloud computing's usefulness is not in reducing costs.

Cloud computing's usefulness is in improved reliability through redundancy.