The argument against the cloud succinctly made:
Cloud computing will not achieve measured penetration because data is the penultimate when it comes to IP and what drives value for corporations going forward. Look no further than Toys R’ Us and Target as two recent examples. Once they realized that they had allowed the fox [Amazon] to guard their hen houses [i.e., their online stores], they immediately withdrew from Amazon’s cloud.
When a competitor [or potential competitor] knows where your customer is located, what your customer purchases, how much they pay, etc., then you have given your business away — pure and simple.
Do you think that Amazon, EBay and Google are not data-mining every transaction that occurs for every online store that they host ? The minute that they see a trend in a new product selling in quantity, etc., they will use the data to their advantage, which usually disadvantages the owner of the data.
Putting your data in the cloud is a sucker's bet.
via Sky’s the Limit – Barrons.com.
Alec Kinnear
Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia.
I’m glad somebody is bringing up this issue of cloud computing. It seems as though only the cost-reducing benefits of cloud computing have been pointed out so far.
However, I can’t stop to wonder. Do major software companies like Oracle, SAP or IBM have back doors in their software, which enable them to “spy” on their customers and leverage their data?
Hi Marcel,
I’m sure there is some spying going on through the IBM, SAP and Oracle database servers. You do run this risk with your own internal IT team as well. One can hope that the big firms are doing some policing. Certainly one has to consider carefully the ethics of a company to which one entrusts sensitive.
Your apprehension about being spied on are somewhat strange given that your homepage is on Facebook. If you are looking for data mining, you need go no further than facebook.
Not just any Tom, Dick or Harry will be running the cloud servers and somewhere along the line you have to trust someone. Remember that Microsoft probably made the browser you are using to view this page and many of you will have a GMail email address. Does Microsoft keep track of where you are going and what you are doing on the Internet? – Of course not. Now Google on the other hand….. damn – there goes my argument down the pan :-(
Alec, what do you mean by strange? Of course Facebook is data mining and using it for advertising.
“Not just any Tom, Dick or Harry will be running the cloud servers”
do you not realize that once your data is in the cloud the cloud keeper will find the cheapest way to manage it – OFFSHORE
In general, simple man is right. The larger companies like IBM and Microsoft will certainly be offshoring it. I’m not sure if Amazon is offshoring or not.
But as in the original post, onshore or offshore, Amazon could be datamining at any given time.
I know that our host Cartika is not offshoring for the moment. I know about half the support staff by name and know a few of them personally.