Peeking behind the Cloud by CNN

We at TraceLink have been taking a hard look at Cloud computing for a while now and it isn't a huge surprise. The solutions we built at SupplyScape shifted from on-premise software with perpetual licenses to SaaS-based software with term licenses back in 2005. There was admittedly a lot of wailing and knashing of teeth as we tried to determine the appetite in the pharmaceutical supply chain for hosted software running critical operations. To the surprise of a few of us, adoption actually occurred pretty quickly as performance and security questions were quickly put to rest. As a result, our SaaS infrastructure continues to bubble along nicely running our Nexus, E-Pedigree and RxAuthentication solutions.

Thus, my antenna was up as I came across this article (and video) by CNN today. Fun stuff! The synopsis is that the author (John Sutter) basically woke up one day and became intrigued at where does all of his data go when he uses Flickr, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. The hunt is on as the John starts down the path of trying to put his arms around the Cloud. (Spoiler Alert) What John finds is that the Cloud is far from soft and fuzzy...rather it is made up of a huge infrastructure of data centers, servers and all of the other accouterments of a typical IT shop. Now, that isn't exactly a surprise to us here but his exploration is a fun ride. Especially as he tries to get the people in charge of these systems to talk about them.



One question in particular that Mr. Sutter raises relates to service levels and trust in an infrastructure that you have a hard time touching. As he puts it: "I thought about what I want in a cloud service. I want my data to be available all the time. And I don't want there to be any chance the company could lose it, a tricky request since the hardware that stores our data is designed to fail from time to time." This is a common question that we have worked with customers on over the years and our own John Kordash will be diving deeply into the Cloud in all its glory over the next few months. Until then...don't let the Cloud rain on your parade!

Comments

Nate Brown commented on 24-Jan-2010 06:22 PM

Great article! With the Google model becoming more and more prevalent (they are gaining a lot of traction with their corporate Gmail and office productivity products) as well as advances in mobile technologies (4g networks, huge bandwidth), I have a feeling many more companies will jump in once they see how they can defray IT costs and decentralize their data, but still maintain security as high or higher than if it was behind their own firewall. Great stuff all, I miss working with you! ~Nate

Russell: Bioreactor Sampling commented on 24-Jan-2010 06:24 PM

Thanks for the link to the article; I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, some of the people that I work with are a bit more methodical in their consideration of the use of the cloud to store our data. Frankly, I can understand their hesitation but I would think that its benefits would far outweigh the drawbacks.

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