Cloud Computing, Cloud Services, Web Services, Web 2.0. Each has its own definition, overlapping with the others to a greater or lesser extent. What it means to the man on the street (or on his or her laptop or mobile), though, is that we’re increasing trusting our valuable (to us, at least) information to a service somewhere out there on the Internet.
For some, this could mean just a webmail account with Gmail or Hotmail and profiles with Facebook and Flickr. For Web Workers (e.g. bloggers and freelancers) it could mean a whole lot more (accounting records, archives, contacts, work in progress, etc.).
Sometimes we get a none too gentle reminder about the risks of Cloud Computing.
To put things in very simplistic terms, the risks are two:
- Risk of inaccessibility. (You don’t have access to your data.)
- Risk of inappropriate accessibility. (The wrong people have access to your data.)
Either of these risks could be the result of human error or a hardware or software failure at the service provider. Data shops are usually pretty good at handling such outages, however. It’s far more likely that problems will result from your Web 2.0 service having a nasty brush with Economy 1.0.
