Until the first lawsuit, or major hack.

The cloud is *way* overrated - unless it's private.

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 05:09, Martin Blackstone <[email protected]> wrote:
> Cloud is such a dirty word isn’t it? But software as a service isn’t. But 
> it's almost the same thing right? How many companies have been using 
> Salesforce or something similar? Welcome to the cloud. Welcome to software as 
> a service.
> If you look at something like Gmail, they actually have a government facility 
> that is much more secured than what we get. For example that’s where the LAPD 
> lives. The city of LA gave up their entire email infrastructure to Google 
> last year.
> I'm saying get with the cloud before the cloud gets you. Your CFO will come 
> to you eventually and tell you to get something in there and you better be 
> ready to deal with it. HOW you deal with it may depend on how you and your 
> department survives. $50 a year for a mailbox is pretty freaking attractive 
> to a guy that has to watch every penny and that’s the bottom line when it 
> comes to the top line. Everyone and I mean everyone says "Our email, our 
> data, our whatever is too sensitive to put in the cloud", and I would be 95% 
> of us are wrong, and there are some very secure cloud locations out there. 
> You just have to find them.
>
> You guys better be ready to get with the program. Our jobs depend on it.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Hornbuckle [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 4:37 AM
> To: NT System Admin Issues
> Subject: Cloud Computing (Was: DNS Server service shuts down shortly after 
> the DC boots)
>
> For all its flaws, I don't see cloud computing as a passing fad. It's not 
> likely to go away, so the best we can do is to work to improve it.
>
> I can tell you that my own organization is a big fan of it. Why? Well, we're 
> a school district. Our core competency isn't the maintenance of complex IT 
> system. We don't have the staff with the knowledge to maintain such systems, 
> and we don't have the money to hire that staff. Our staffing levels have 
> actually shrunk due to budget cuts, while the number of various systems and 
> applications we're using is continuing to grow. Every new app means more 
> storage space, more backup job complexity, more hardware utilization, more 
> support requirements, more time troubleshooting, more time upgrading--the 
> list goes on and on.
>
> So what can we do? Outsource the maintenance of as many systems as possible 
> to companies who specialize in that type of work (so they can almost always 
> do it better than us) and who gain economies of scale (so they can almost 
> always do it cheaper than us). Put the app in the cloud, and let someone else 
> worry about things like backups, upgrades, and support. And having it 
> web-based has the added benefit of there being no client-side software for us 
> to have to worry about.
>
> Reliability hasn't been a factor for us with our cloud-based apps. Our 
> Internet connection is pretty reliable. If it goes down, we have alternate 
> means of connecting to our most critical apps. Security? Well, the best we 
> can do there is to have a good contract stipulating our requirements and the 
> consequences of security breaches. I'm the most advanced tech in our 
> organization, but I'm not a security expert--I'm a technology generalist, not 
> a specialist. That means these companies can handle security AT LEAST as well 
> as we can, and often better.
>
> It's not right for every organization and every application. But for us, 
> cloud computing offers significant benefits. We're leaning more and more on 
> it all the time.
>
>
>
> John Hornbuckle
> MIS Department
> Taylor County School District
> www.taylor.k12.fl.us
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kurt Buff [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 11:36 PM
> To: NT System Admin Issues
> Subject: Re: DNS Server service shuts down shortly after the DC boots
>
> Oh, yeah.
>
> Somehow, though, it seems to me as if 'the cloud' violates the CIA triangle 
> of security.
>
> At the very least,
>
> a) availability is compromised (if you don't have Internet connectivity, 
> among other things),
>
> b) integrity is compromised (new ways of breaking out of VMs to the 
> underlying host, and you don't know who you're sharing a physical host with, 
> not to mention issues with network traffic from the various VMs on a physical 
> host being sniffed.)
>
> Color me deeply skeptical.
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 17:34, Carl Houseman <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Seems the 'cloud' is the new buzzword for how we're going to increase
>> profits next quarter.  The cloud will save us!  The cloud will reduce
>> our expensive fixed costs!  Has Dilbert done something on the cloud
>> yet?  If
>>
>> not, it's just a matter of time.
>>
>>
>>
>> From: David Lum [mailto:[email protected]]
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 5:00 PM
>> To: NT System Admin Issues
>> Subject: RE: DNS Server service shuts down shortly after the DC boots
>>
>>
>>
>> True, but I’ll use OpenDNS way before using Google or MS DNS servers…
>>
>>
>>
>> The cloud the cloud…everything is cloud around my office with exec’s
>> …“SharePoint’s broke and we have no expertise here…move it to the cloud!
>> Exchange, Live Communications Server, ship –‘em all out!”
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[email protected]]
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 1:26 PM
>> To: NT System Admin Issues
>> Subject: RE: DNS Server service shuts down shortly after the DC boots
>>
>>
>>
>> Not everyone wants to depend on DNS services 'in the cloud' even if
>> they're free...
>
>
>
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>
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>
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>

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