News - Cloud computing could boost UK economy by €30bn a year

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Plus increase European economy by €645bn in 5 years, says report.

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Read more.

Not sure I agree with all of that - there has to be a fundamental shift in the applications companies use. Putting your own applications into "the cloud" does not make it a cloud application.

The industrial revolution link is a reference to Simon Wardley's "what is Cloud Computing" keynote ( which to anyone wanting to know what all this "Cloud" stuff is about, is one of the best definitions I've found )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okqLxzWS5R4

Wardley talks about the indurtial revolution not being a single event based on a single technology , but a series of transformations over a passage of time.

I'd be interested to know which Storage vendor comissioned this ? ( guessing at 3 letters , starting with an E? - recently released a "Cloud Architect" Certification)

Your worrying far too much Moby-Dick. This government's track record proves it's cable of advising & commenting on high tech, next generation computing issues that effect just about every vital industry in the UK! ''next gen'' Broadband, NHS computer system upgrades, ID cards etc...

I sleep well at night knowing a scenerio like SkyNet/The Matrix is being actively & rigorously prevented by our loyal leaders inability to pull their head out of their ass! :D

Until we have cheap low latency high bandwidth net connections for the Small business cloud computing will not happen the way people are expecting. I love the thought of on demand grunt and storage that will scale as the users base grows but without a decent backbone to connect to it whats the point?

The only thing in the cloud at the moment are these people heads.

My problem with cloud computing is kind of like all outsourcing, these start off as great deals however you can easily become locked into a service. (This is the case at my work). Getting the originating data/program back to move it elsewhere or to build up a new service to the same level as an old so you can switch become very difficult tasks.

Agreed - anything needs to be on a bit more of an open framework.

I wonder how difficult it is to transition your data out of something like Salesforce.com ?

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Originally Posted by oolon

My problem with cloud computing is kind of like all outsourcing, these start off as great deals however you can easily become locked into a service. (This is the case at my work). Getting the originating data/program back to move it elsewhere or to build up a new service to the same level as an old so you can switch become very difficult tasks.

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I always assumed this was the motivation behind the cloud concept - it's a way of getting people (or more relevantly, probably, companies) to pay a fee for a regular service.

Personally, I'm not going down the cloud route, not now and not ever.

In terms of storage, I can (and do) do anything I need myself, and it's far more scalable than anything I currently need or am ever likely to. I'll also take any security and backup measures I think are needed, and I'll keep my data under my own control. In terms of applications, I'll pay for it once and I'll upgrade it when I need to (i.e. not just when a new version comes out). For instance, I still use Office 2000 because it does everything I need, so why pay for upgrades? And my contact manager package is so old it was, I think, written for Windows 3.11. Seriously. So if I won't pay for superfluous upgrades, you can imagine what I think of the idea of paying rent on an app every month. I'm just not doing it.

I can see why the cloud concept appeals to some, and it may well be the way of the future, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a retrograde step back towards putting computing power back in the hands of big-iron corporates. I was glad to get away from that and am not going back to it.

I think some services are worth outsourcing

I use gmail for our email, we have offsite backup for our key data and we use a mail archiving system to keep the next 10 years worth of email. Trying to plan for capacity like this is very hard to do so throwing it out to another provider is more efficient.

I think when we talk about "the cloud" we should really be talking more about Virtualisation as really this is the key technology that allows "the cloud" to exist

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Originally Posted by Jay

I think some services are worth outsourcing

I use gmail for our email, we have offsite backup for our key data and we use a mail archiving system to keep the next 10 years worth of email. Trying to plan for capacity like this is very hard to do so throwing it out to another provider is more efficient.

I think when we talk about "the cloud" we should really be talking more about Virtualisation as really this is the key technology that allows "the cloud" to exist

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Oh sure, some things are indeed worth outsourcing. What that is will depend on who you are, what you can do for yourself and the perceived value of outsourcing something, perhaps compared to the opportunity cost of doing it yourself.

Personally, though, email is one of the last things I'd outsource and though I have a gmail account, by virtue of my domestic ISP, there's no way I'll let anything that matters go anywhere near it. I simply do not trust Google not to be datamining (*), and they're not having any important emails of mine. Besides, I've been storing and backing up my own emails, and other important data for a very long time .... including doing my own off-site backups of the bits that really matter, like emails and accounting data, and some other bits.



(*) I have no idea if they do or not, or plan to in the future, and am not suggesting what they currently do, or intend. It's simply that I don't trust them not to.

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I think when we talk about "the cloud" we should really be talking more about Virtualisation as really this is the key technology that allows "the cloud" to exist

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Don't confuse the two - On Demand infrastructure has been available long before mainstream virtualisation. Watch the Keynote I linked to -it really is the best definition of cloud computing. Moving your existing applications to a public infrastructure provider isn't quite the same thing.

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Originally Posted by Saracen

Oh sure, some things are indeed worth outsourcing. What that is will depend on who you are, what you can do for yourself and the perceived value of outsourcing something, perhaps compared to the opportunity cost of doing it yourself.

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Nail on the head there. To some smaller organisations, the opportunity cost of doing your own IT and the headaches that ensues is too high. It's highly dependant on the individual and the organisation as to whether it's worth it.
Generally, the larger the organisation, the less value in outsourcing your IT, whether it be to "the cloud"* or to a 3rd party it support organisation.


* Did you know that cloud computing has over 30 definitions currently. A strong indicator or the level of hot air surrounding this latest IT fad. It'll settle down at some point and then the real value of cloud computing will be better known.

Martin , watch that Video I linked. its well over 60 :)

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Originally Posted by badass

Nail on the head there. To some smaller organisations, the opportunity cost of doing your own IT and the headaches that ensues is too high. It's highly dependant on the individual and the organisation as to whether it's worth it.
Generally, the larger the organisation, the less value in outsourcing your IT, whether it be to "the cloud"* or to a 3rd party it support organisation.
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Quite so. Unless a smaller organisation is either in IT, or happens to have someone with the skills, IT can be a major headache. Part of my income comes from being where some small local companies outsource some of their headache areas to, and that's everything from setting up accounting systems to basic web development, and their logic is that it's better to pay to get it done right than try to do it themselves and either spend a lot of time that's more productively used doing what they're in business to do, or end up making mistakes doing something that isn't their forte. For instance, one company was doing some nasty but basic arithmetic on forms that required dozens of calculations per form, and a lot of time was saved, and error rates considerably reduced, by using a simple spreadsheet with some simple data validation, range checking and conditional formatting. Some of the guys in the company could have written the spreadsheets themselves, but were too busy running the company.

I like outsourcing when it's getting me work, but it doesn't change that I'm not trusting my data to outsourcing companies when I can do all I need to do with it, myself, easily and more cheaply, and especially considering the commercial confidentiality of some of it (belonging to clients) and, of course, info under NDA. If it gets out because I've outsourced, it's my neck on the block. And as for the notion of renting apps from Google/MS rather than buying, I've zero interest in that, but it may make sense for some, especially if they want to be constantly up-to-date.