Storage Monkeys

The sky is falling!  Cloud storage and computing are the next Hindenburg!  Run for your lives!  Or so some analysts, news agencies, and bloggers would have you believe.

Whilst there have certainly been some very high profile cloud computing failures in T-Mobile’s Sidekick, as well as Google Gmail and Google Apps several times throughout 2009, it is important to put some things in perspective.

Now, I’m not going to have a go at any alarmist headlines or related ‘knee jerk’ behaviour from the media, analysts, or fellow bloggers.  The fact is, we all have a living to make and let’s be honest ...with the information overload most average users face, it sometimes becomes vital to use eye catching headlines to sell column inches or drive web traffic.

Equally, whilst we will need to wait a while to discover exactly what caused the failures I mentioned above, there is very real reason to believe that they were most likely not caused by technology but, rather, were process failures as Chris Mellor of The Register discusses here.

Chris does raise some very interesting points in his article, but I am not convinced that the establishment of another trade organisation is the right answer to protecting users from future failures in cloud storage.  Indeed, during the most recent T-Mobile Sidekick outage SNIA, the Storage Networking Industry Association, said ...nothing.  What made this even more profound was the fact that SNIA had announced the launch of their Cloud Storage Initiative on the same week that the T-Mobile Sidekick outage occurred.  A very robust debate by storage professionals with Wayne Adams, SNIA Chairman, ensued on Storage Monkeys here.

So if I’m not advocating the establishment of yet another trade organisation to certify and regulate cloud providers, what’s the answer?

Not wishing to oversimplify or be dismissive of Chris’ views, but I think there are two answers here.

First, let’s be pragmatic regarding the amount of data customers are likely to store in the cloud.  We know that, in an average customer environment, 80% of the stored data is likely to be unstructured ...email, PowerPoints, MP3s, etc... leaving 20% structured ...databases, billing systems, and so on.  I have not met many customers who make their money on unstructured data, so many rightly place emphasis on structured data.  Just as I don’t believe that Spotify will be the death of iPods or iTunes, with the average listener choosing to pay for and retain the music which matters most to them, so I feel that most customers will choose to continue to store their structured data in house and consider using cloud storage for elements of their unstructured data.

Secondly, I don’t believe that customers are ready to give up on cloud storage or cloud computing even given the outages.  Indeed, a recent study shows that “Ten percent of the more than 500 executives responding were testing or had deployed cloud computing projects, compared with 3 percent when the same survey was conducted nine months earlier.  The number of companies with no plans to adopt cloud computing dropped from 54 percent to 37 percent, according to the study, which was conducted in late August and early September by Kelton Research.”  They will, however, become more demanding of service level and related guarantees from their service providers.

And therein lies the possible answer.  If we consider the credit card transaction processing industry for a moment, VISA is a certifying body which allows independent credit card transaction processors and banks to process VISA transactions ...but only after they are fully vetted and have systems and processes certified by VISA.  Don’t comply, you don’t get to process credit card transactions...it is as simple as that.  No moolah or you!

In my opinion customers should, in the future, demand that their cloud provider have insurance from a recognised insurance company to underwrite their service.  The insurance company would then most surely certify and vet not only cloud provider systems but, perhaps more importantly, the processes employed for backup and continuity of the cloud systems.

Don’t comply?  You don’t get insurance.  And without insurance, customers will surely be hesitant if not downright refuse to trade with you as a cloud provider.  The process and system failure prone providers would die on the vine, leaving only the strongest process driven providers to prevail.

Is this the answer?  Only time will tell, but I personally feel it a better way forward than another trade body.