Silicon Shecky

So Microsoft is declaring this year, yet again, the year of cloud computing. I’m going to a meeting with a different partner on cloud computing. You hear that cloud computing is the wave of the future and can save SMBs money. while all that might be true based on a cost per on site server and maintenance versus cost of having a hosted solution, there are reasons why cloud computing hasn’t quite taken off the way everyone figures it will.

The biggest issue with hosted solutions, otherwise known as cloud computing, can be summarize in one word, bandwith. From experience with my clients, they get a T1 line, a business class cable line, or some other line that at best offers them maybe 3MB upstream and 6MB downstream. Most use T1’s which is only 1.5MB up and down stream. Heck I have clients that constantly complain about their speed, and yet are not willing to pay more than the $500-$1000 that they are already paying for Internet access. Some have remote locations where a user or two sits, and then complains about load times (even when they are just going into a terminal server) because of lack of bandwith.

Now, you take an average SMB office and the people in it. for a 5person office, you have e-mail, documents, maybe some web sites they need to connect to. Now add on the family type atmosphere that allows, music streaming, YouTube, and all sorts of other fun stuff that can eat up bandwith. All of a sudden that T1 is filled. Now if you try to move that server up to the cloud, you hit more traffic that needs to go up and down that 1.5MB pipe. Talk about lag city.

Unfortunately, we are a culture where T1 is fast has been ingrained in our brains. My home Internet has 1.5MB upstream but is 18MB downstream. Yeah, that’s 12 times as fast. People who have Verizon’s FIOS can get 50-100MB up and down. A T1 line now compared to what one can get for their house for way less, is like a 36K modem compared to a T1 10 years ago. The pricing for a T1 is way out of whack with the times, and faster speeds for business become cost prohibitive. The slow upgrade of the ISPs to a full cost effective fiber solution is the biggest barrier to point of entry for cloud computing.

The day will come when bandwith will be affordable enough that cloud computing will take off. That day though, is not here yet.

So I try to read the online tech sites on a daily basis at least. I recently came across and article about the problems with Google’s Android Marketplace. I want to say that before I go into each of his points, yes there are some shortcomings with the Marketplace, but Android overall is a different creature, and if you expect it to be an iPhone clone, you are in for a rude awakening.

Garett Rogers, in his article, breaks down what he sees as wrong with the Android Marketplace. Unfortunately, this “story” is actually more of an Op/Ed piece without being clearly marked as such. Everyone is allowed their opinions, but to try and pass opinions off as unbiased new is wrong, and gives actual journalists a bad name. I make no qualms that this blog is my opinions and thoughts, and while I do try to keep it as professional as possible, and at time do reviews where I do my best to set aside my biases, I have no problem reminding people that most things are op/ed here. That being said, lets get onto his points and my counterpoints.

Garett breaks the issues he has with Android’s Marketplace to 5 items. First up  on his list is “Add a review process.” This point is good in an aspect of weeding out spam apps, but Android is an open platform, and the marketplace is just as open. This is not Apple, where you have to abide by terms that change from moment to moment, and on a whim. Also, there are user reviews (star ratings) on the apps in the Marketplace, which is a self vetting process.

Second item on Garett’s list is, “A good ratio of paid apps vs free apps is absolutely necessary.” I tend to disagree with this, and he needs to remember that a lot of the free apps, come with a small, non-obtrusive, ad-bar (Which i barely notice). Google’s money is made from advertising. From that advertising, even “free” apps make money. The thing to research is, how do these ads, and ad money translate to the developer.

Third up on the hit parade, Garett writes, “Apps need to be discoverable.” This point I couldn’t agree with more. The search function in the Android Marketplace is ok, but really needs to be improved on. I can search and while I get a good amount of semi-relevant to relevant apps, I get a lot of junk that has no relation to the words I typed in the search box. Google, being the king of search, has been disappointing in this aspect.

The next point brought up is about currency, and I really can’t argue against showing the app prices in the currency of our choosing. I have no clue how many dollars to a pound, I just want to know what my cost is in my currency.

His final point is, “Modify the return policy.” He basis this on the developer possible loosing money because of returned apps. Now I don’t know how Apple does it, or if they even allow for app returns, but toughening a return policy on apps downloaded is a tough thing to do. Its an open market, and by showing their respect for the consumer, Google looks like the consumer will wind up helping police the bad apps. Its a review process, a vetting process.

Is the Android Marketplace perfect? Not by any means. It has area that can be improved upon, but to make it go down the road of the Apple Marketplace and iTunes (Stupid piece of junk that iTunes is), leaves no room to grow, or worse, could prompt legal action. After all we all have been reading about how everyone loves suing everyone over pattens now.

Everyone is talking about Cloud computing. Put things up on The Cloud. SMBs save money by moving to The Cloud. The Cloud is not everything its cracked up to be though, as one of the biggest cloud providers has recently shown.

Before we get into the heart of this op/ed type piece (I do try to use facts, but the thoughts are my own), let us take a basic look at what cloud computing is generally being marketed as. The basic idea is that you remove the server from your location, put it on the Internet through a secure host (the biggest names hosting are Microsoft, Amazon and Google), therefor giving you the ability to work from anywhere, not have to worry about server maintenance, or having an IT department( there are other aspects such as MSPs, Backup to remote data centers, and more that do not apply to this article). To quote the movie Murder by Death, “Interesting theory, one small problem. Is stupid, is most stupid theory I ever heard!”

Why is it so stupid (In my opinion). For a few reasons. First and foremost is security. Take a look at the recent problems with Google and China and you will see what I mean. The hacking, the lack of being able to harden a server yourself (or letting an IT company you can hold responsible), the lack of control. Take a look at what is going on through some of the security sites, not just the small spattering you hear from mainstream media(which will not always tell you the full story due to corporate connections). Now you might say, but I’m small why would someone want to hack me, and that is not the reason you would be hacked. It could be a side effect of being hosted on a much more visible target (again, Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc…).

Once you get past the security aspect, you run into, what happens to your data overall. Who owns it? If you got out of business, does it get destroyed properly? What if you decide to move off the cloud to a local server, does the hosting company have to keep copies of your data due to regulations? A lot of those types of issues are easily solved through contracts, but are you reading through the contract properly. From personal experience with Off-Site backups, the company I work for and our partners put in writing that the data is our clients, and if they want it destroyed due to changing services, going out of business etc… we can do that. This is just data backup though. What about when your whole server is up there?

Finally the reason the cloud is not ready for prime time is infrastructure. Mostly ISP speeds and costs. think about it, you start saving money by bringing your server up to the cloud, but find that access times to files, to e-mails, is extremely slow, and that cuts down on your productivity. The fastest you can go is going to be the slowest link in the chain.

Most businesses are still working off the T1 assumption. A T1 is 1.5Mbp downstream and upstream. This really is not a lot compared to the sizes of files, amount of data being transmitted, and other small factors such as number of people sharing that line. If you are on the cloud, you no longer have just e-mail constantly streaming in, but authentication protocols, Active Directory communications (if its a Microsoft server), Word documents, Quickbooks data (if needed) and much more. Think of it this way, the average home Internet speed is 12Mbp down, 1.5 Mbp up. Faster on the downstream, same on the upstream, which would be your clog. A T1 averages $500-$1000 per month. Home Internet costs around $30-$70 per month but does not have the Quality of service needed to be reliable for could computing. Fiber Internet is the solution (60+Mbp down and up for $1000=$1500 per month right now), but availability of it is spotty at best. Until this bottleneck is fixed, no matter how secure it might be, or guarantees about the data ownership are resolved, I cannot recommend could computing.

The biggest thing to realize is that there is give and take in everything. To really come up with savings, you have to figure in items such as security, lost time due to connectivity, plus you still need someone to be able to take care of your local PCs. A good local IT consultant in the long run is still a better option for most SMBs. A Managed Service Plan with a local IT firm is probably the best, cause its a one low cost solution that covers most everything, and you can budget for because the cost is locked in for the length of the contract. Think about that before you go cloud hopping.