Big clouds and little clouds

Cloud computing is a hot topic. Again. The notion comes and goes, the buzzword hits the charts, then fades away after awhile.

What are people thinking about now when they talk about "Cloud Computing"?

I remember as a young computer tech student oh about 15 years ago. We were learning on Novell Netware 4, which was the industry standard and Windows 3.11 was the "new" thing.

Novell's big thing was also cloud computing at the time.

Yes by golly, You would be able to set up servers that provided apps and authentication ( Novell's biggest push was in NDS or Novell Directory Service" ) as well as storage and many other services locally, and even be able to provide access to these same services not only in the workplace as an "intranet" but on the Internet as well.

Sound familiar?

Of course, back then the focus was still primarily on the business intranet, but the spread of the internet and potential to tap that wide spread access had huge meaning to global businesses and enterprises with spread out staff.

These days we have "Web 2.0", Software as A Service ( think Google Docs ) and a vast array of newly arriving tools and service providers, eager to provide you fantastic services all online at a very reasonable price.

I like to think of these as "big cloud" providers. They want to do it all for us. One stop shopping for our software and access needs.

However, there are my personal favorites, the "little clouds". Little clouds are businesses and organizations who maintain local services and apps either on their own physical location or through the use of contracted hosting providers.

These little clouds provide access to a variety of web apps allowing staff to collaborate on documents and scheduling, email and instant messaging. A plethora of software is now available allowing the mid and small sized businesses and organizations to host their own sites and services. Further allowing them the most control over content and appearance, how strict or lax security and access will be. I like being able to say that GNU/Linux is one of the most proactive supporters of software such as these and is always available for the company that dares take their business network interests into their own hands.

Can Google's servers go down, leaving users with no access to their documents and tools? It absolutely can and it has. Can your local servers, providing similar services go down and leave your users out temporarily? They sure can. So, which risk is greater, using the "super-provider" or serving your self?

If Google goes down, you have to wait for them to get back up. "Sorry, can't help you just now, thousands of other users are hammering at us as well while we try to get things back up as soon as possible. Thanks for calling."

If your server goes down, you call your local tech to get his tukus in gear, get the hardware or whatever it otherwise requires, dust off those regularly scheduled backups you've been religiously doing and get back up hopefully quicker than the "big boys" because you have less to fix.

Can "Big Clouds" cost you a lot of money? You betcha. They are offering a premium service and all of it on their hardware. How does that cost spread out compared to the cost of hosting your own servers locally? Depending on your needs and hardware requirements, ( and how much you pay your local tech )it can cost a lot also ( although, if you are using GNU/Linux software, at least you don't have to have per user licenses, etc.. hounding you ) and over all, the costs may come out high for both solutions.

So then what do you do?

What does local control and specific customization worth to you? What does the likelihood of recovering from a downed server faster than the "Big Clouds" can mean for your business?

If those are very important, or at least more important than letting someone else make those choices for you and your business, then you might seriously consider following the "little cloud" route.

Only you and your business can determine what is the best path to take, based on anticipated costs and the value of not doing the brunt of the work yourself locally.


Me? I prefer to ride on 'little clouds" any day. It makes me feel like I'm actually doing something.