On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 11:49 -0400, Matthew J. Roth wrote: > Antonio Olivares wrote: > > > Keywords: properly designed :) > > > > But you are still succeptible to a third party[even though the files could be crypted and apparently not seen, that might not be the case] and you can't be 100% safe. > > > > Don't get me wrong, the techonology is there to do this, but like Mr. Stallman says, then we will > be at the mercy of the "Cloud" > > Antonio, > > If this is a great worry to you, then you can own the clowd. > > >From <www.redhat.com/f/pdf/cloud/101_whitepaper.pdf>: > > Cloud computing can take place...on-premises (private cloud)...private > cloud infrastructures can provide many of the same benefits as a > public cloud without the loss of control. > > Obviously, there is an overhead involved in creating a private clowd, but the option is there if its benefits outweigh the costs to an organization. Sorry I'm "late to the party" on this one. This (consulting, designing, deploying, and managing cloud environments) is what I do in my day job, so I'm regularly at ground zero of these and related issues. I drive a lot of thought leadership for my company in this area. In fact, what I'm seeing is that private internal cloud environments are definitely the trend, even as public cloud gets all of the attention. So I would say that private cloud systems, along with interoperability standards, is where the market is actually headed. Why? Two reasons: Cost and Security. Earlier posters are correct: It doesn't matter how secure someone tells you your data is on their systems. If it's outside of your firewall, you generally don't want someone else holding and managing your company's data "crown jewels" and intellectual property. Period. End. Second, it turns out that the actual cost of using a public cloud in any volume is almost embarrassingly high. I've run models that show it's usually more cost-effective even for very small deployments (3 to 6 physical servers) over a 3 year period to use a private internal cloud infrastructure system than to use public cloud. I often use an air-travel example: After a certain threshold, it's just plain cheaper and far more flexible to go buy an airplane than it is to buy a big pile of airline tickets. As the cost for the virtualization software needed to build cloud infrastructure continues to drop, and hardware / networking components continue to increase in power / speed while simultaneously becoming cheaper, operation and acquisition costs will only continue to lean in favor of private cloud. A private internal cloud deployment provides all of the benefits of cloud infrastructure with full control of a company's assets. All I need to take advantage of it is to invest in the skills and capital. When you realize that this investment is actually quite small on a relative scale and getting cheaper all the time, it becomes a no-brainer. So what's left is to have a set of interoperability standards that allow people to move cloud based systems and applications from one place to the next with ease of administration and full security. Those standards (example: OVF) are developing quickly. So I would agree that, while cloud is the future of computing from a technology perspective, public cloud is looking every day to be more of a fad than a future, save that those systems that are externally hosted today will migrate to this infrastructure for the sake of management and interoperability. Cheers, Chris PS: For those of you (especially) who know who I work for, keep in mind the standard disclaimer that these opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer. -- ==================================================== "The most effective way to do it is to do it." --Amelia Earhart, American Aviation Pioneer -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines