How stupid is Windows Azure?

chunter

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7693993.stm

I really don't get this "cloud" computing. What idiot would want the entire details of their lives sitting on somebody else's computer.
For anybody that watched last night's Panorama(?) and seen how easy it is at the minute to get a hold of personal information, the thought that ALL your stuff belongs to someone else is crazy.
1) I don't use google or yahoo for emails.

2) I wouldn't use the email address given by your isp (eg [EMAIL="john@tiscali.co.uk"]john@tiscali.co.uk[/EMAIL]) for one simple reason. Tiscali for example, when they reset your broadband password, also reset your email password. Now they tell you to change it asap, but how many know to go into their router and the tiscali website and sort it out.
How many people's Tiscali email password is 123456
How many peoples AOL email password is ABC123 (or something like it)

3) Big companies ask for post codes and date of birth to check security.
Has no one ever heard of 192.com?

Domokun

Sorry, what's your problem? With Cloud Computing or with people's lack of security common sense? Server-based apps like Google docs are already extremely popular, and it would make sense for MS to hop on the band wagon. I think you have misunderstood the concept, and urge you to read up a little more before passing judgement.

Contrary to popular belief, MS is actually run by humans, and they tend to know what they're doing; it just happens to be very easy to pick holes in their software/ideals/OS ect.

[Deleted User]

You're getting confused by a poorly written article by the BBC. Azure is aimed at businesses to give them the flexibility to deploy scalable systems across multiple device platforms at a significantly reduced cost to do so, not to mention not having to procure relevent hardware to do so and a reduction in IT Support costs.

I for one would welcome this coming into the home market. I've got three computers and it's annoying to be out and about with either my laptop or my netbook and have forgotten to put files, pictures etc onto something like Flickr, Picassa even Facebook etc to show people..

Edit: Not forgetting to mention that when you use such services you literally eliminate the possibility of losing your data through hardware failure and it will also be protected from malware, virii, spyware which if you take this forum for an example is rife.

Lots of companies already use similar services for Exchange hosting because it's cheaper and comes with uptime guarantees. Down services cost businesses money by not being able to operate.

d900

i use 3 cloud computing services

1 for file storage

1 for web hosting

1 for virtual pc hosting

its cheap fast and usefull

Conor_3

Domokun wrote: »

Sorry, what's your problem? With Cloud Computing or with people's lack of security common sense? Server-based apps like Google docs are already extremely popular,

With the recent outage and Googles lack of interest in sorting it, there's been many an IT guy who recommended moving over to Google Apps finding themselves on the dole queue recently.

The whole cloud based computing thing is becoming a huge FAIL as businesses have quickly found out that it relies on connectivity and the company who runs it. If Google, the champions of the cause, can have several days outage and give the pzz poor customer support they have to their paying punters, basically saying they don't give a damn, how bad are others going to be?

At least if its your own servers that go down, you can send a guy to go fix them and cobble together a temporary workaround in the meantime. You have control over it. If it's someone else at the other side of the world...different story.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/25/cloud_dziuba/

superscaper

How stupid is it? Not at all, in fact it's a very smart move if MS want to stay competative and with current social and technological trends. I find myself already naturally using more and more cloud services, from keeping some email accounts on remote servers only so I can access them anywhere to backing up critical stuff online in addition to CDs etc. We're all becoming more demanding in wanting our information and services to be accessible anywhere and more portable, and that's all cloud computing really is. This is a supply to existing demands rather than trying to push (pun intended ) new technology on us. All depends on how far you take cloud computing and what's appropriate for the requirements. Making use of cloud computing doesn't mean EVERYTHING is online, you can do as much or as little as you want. I'm sure pretty much everyone makes use of some cloud computing service but it's only really recently that the term has become trendy. But it's still an umbrella term.

Conor_3

anewhope wrote: »

I for one would welcome this coming into the home market. I've got three computers and it's annoying to be out and about with either my laptop or my netbook and have forgotten to put files, pictures etc onto something like Flickr, Picassa even Facebook etc to show people..

This assumes you can actually get a working internet connection. No internet connection, no files and no applications. And when you've downloaded it off your camera to your computer you've still got to remember to save it to your web based application which is no different to remembering to save it to Flickr etc.

anewhope wrote: »

Edit: Not forgetting to mention that when you use such services you literally eliminate the possibility of losing your data through hardware failure

Instead you're hoping that the service you use doesn't. The thing is, they don't always have backups as the Google and Yahoo Mail outages showed when lots of people lost all their email data. At least if it's local, you back it up.

anewhope wrote: »

Lots of companies already use similar services for Exchange hosting because it's cheaper and comes with uptime guarantees. Down services cost businesses money by not being able to operate.

And they pay a lot of money for that SLA as well. Lots of money. Far more than Average Joe will think worth it.

The thing is though that if my internet goes down, I can still work with word/exel etc documents because the applications are on my PC. If I were using Google Apps, I couldn't.

chunter

ok so there's 2 completely different issue in there.

But the cloud stuff is a lazy alternative.
When the connection goes down, the system gets hacked or data is lost, who are you going to blame? And who is responsible?
Can't happen eh?

EDIT : fundamentally we're back to the old argument of centralised v distributed computing. Remember an old IBM desktop coming on the market when the big IBM, ICL and DEC mainframes dominated everything?

superscaper

Why does it have to be one or the other? Definitely a false dichotomy if ever I heard one.

I use an online todo list, that's a type of cloud computing. I can access it from my home, work computers, mobile etc. Does that mean EVERYTHING I do is online? No. Does it mean it's all or nothing if I lose internet connection or their servers go down? No, especially not with the likes of Google Gears and desktop backups etc, so I can still use the application and have the last updated version to hand.

Another example is backing up online, that's another form of cloud computing. Does it mean I only backup online? No. Am I stuck if I lose internet connection? No. Does it mean I have to do everything else as cloud computing? No. Am I compromised if the servers and information is improbably hacked? No, anything sensitive is encrypted, in fact my data's probably more at risk on my home pc than on the remote servers.

nickcardwell

Conor wrote: »

With the recent outage and Googles lack of interest in sorting it, there's been many an IT guy who recommended moving over to Google Apps finding themselves on the dole queue recently.

You get what you pay for. i dont know any IT guy worth his salt who would recommend google apps for business.

The whole cloud based computing thing is becoming a huge FAIL as businesses have quickly found out that it relies on connectivity and the company who runs it. If Google, the champions of the cause, can have several days outage and give the pzz poor customer support they have to their paying punters, basically saying they don't give a damn, how bad are others going to be?

for home i use humyo, its a cloud based computing for backing up data/pics/music. I can set it to work offline, so if i dont have internet access i can still access my files.

for work, we use a 3rd party spam filtering system, its cloud based computing as well, multiple cluster servers, we have been using it for 2 years now, and i can not remember it ever going down on us.

95% of the company emails are spam, which dont get sent down the line (wasting band width) the other 5% of emails (which is approx 5000-9000 per day ) do come on down

Conor_3

d900 wrote: »

i use 3 cloud computing services

1 for file storage

1 for web hosting

1 for virtual pc hosting

its cheap fast and usefull

Do you have local backups of the files on the file storage service?